*Vi 



Herrkk 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Shelf uti.£... 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CHAPTERS ON PLANT LIFE 



BY 

SOPHIE BLEDSOE HERRICK 



\\ 



Ellustrateto 




NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1885 



HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE SERIES. 

Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1.00 per volume. 



THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY BROWN. Edited by W. L. Alden. 

THE CRUISE OF THE CANOE CLUB. By W. L. ALDEN. 

THE CRUISE OF THE " GHOST." By W. L. ALDEN. 

THE MORAL PIRATES. By W. L. ALDEN. 

TOBY TYLER-, or, TEN WEEKS WITH A CIRCUS. By JAMES OTIS. 

MR. STUBBS'S BROTHER. A Sequel to "Toby Tyler." By JAMES OTIS. 

TIM AND TIP; or, THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY AND A DOG. By JAMES OTIS. 

LEFT BEHIND; or, TEN DAYS A NEWSBOY. By JAMES OTIS. 

RAISING THE "PEARL." By James Otis. 

MILDRED'S BARGAIN, AND OTHER STORIES. By LUCY C. LlLLIE. 

NAN. By LUCY C. LlLLIE. 

THE FOUR MAONICOLS. By WILLIAM BLACK. 

THE LOST CITY ; or, THE BOY EXPLORERS IN CENTRAL ASIA. By David Ker. 

THE TALKING LEAVES. An Indian Story. By W. O. STODDARD. 

WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON ? By JOHN Habbeeton, Author of " Helen's Babies." 

PRINCE LAZYBONES, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mrs. W. J. Hays. 

THE ICE QUEEN. By Ernest Ingersoll. 

CHAPTERS ON PLANT LIFE. By Mrs. S. B. Herrick. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

P^pf* Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the 
United States, on receipt of the price. 






/ 



Copyright, 1885, by Harper & Brothers. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. pagk 

Introductory .9 

CHAPTER II. 
A Flowerless Flour Garden 13 

CHAPTER III. 
The Fairy Fungi .28 

CHAPTER IY. 
Odd Fish in the Vegetable World 43 

CHAPTER V. 
Lichens 57 

CHAPTER VI. 
Plants and Animals— Their Difference 71 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Thirsty Flowers 84 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Plants Caught Napping 95 



4 Contents. 

CHAPTER IX. page 

Liverworts 107 

CHAPTER X. 
Mosses 120 

CHAPTER XI. 
Ferns 132 

CHAPTER XII. 
Flowers in Fancy Dress 142 

CHAPTER XIII. 
"Picciola" 157 

CHAPTER XIY. 
Climbing Plants 172 

CHAPTER XV. 
Vegetable Pitchers 183 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Some Queer Traps 193 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FIG. PAGE 

1. Toadstools 15 

2. Yeast Plaxt .16 

3. Mould (PenkiUium) 21 

4. Mould {Aspergillus) 24 

5. Mould (Mucor) 25 

6. Grape Fungus , 31 

7. Potato Fungus 34 

8. Leaf Mildew 35 

9. Rye Smut 37 

10. Mildew ox Virglxta Creeper 39 

11. Silk-worm Fuxgus 41 

12. First-berry Fish 45 

13. Eel-plaxt 48 

14. Coloxles of First-berry Fish 51 

15. Vegetable Shell-fish 53 

16. " " 55 

17. Lichex Magxified 60 

18. Woolly Lichex 62 

19. Lichex 64 

20. Excrustlxg Lichex 65 

21. Relxdeer Lichex 67 

22. Aximal Seaweed {Plumularid) 72 



6 Illustrations. 

FIO. PAGE 

23. Animal 73 

24. Vegetable 74 

25. Watek Plant and Water Animal 75 

26. Liverwort Mouth or Room 79 

27. Plant Mouth 80 

28. Cells 86 

29. Corn Stalk cut Across 88 

30. Plant Mouths 89 

31. Water-carrying Tubes (Side View of Corn-stalk Tubes) 91 

32. Cactus 93 

33. Locust Branch Awake 97 

34. Locust Branch Asleep , .... 98 

35. Sensitive Plant Awake 99 

36. Sensitive Plant Asleep 100 

37. Yellow and Common White Clover 103 

38. The Path op the Nod 105 

39. Leaf of Liverwort . . 109 

40. Part of Leaf of Liverwort, Magnified 110 

41. Leaf of Liverwort cut through one Room* and Floor 111 

42. Seed Disk 113 

43. Whip-case 115 

44. Cupule, or Nest 118 

45. Moss Spore-cases 123 

46. Young Moss Plant 124 

47. Whip-case 126 

48. Ovule-case 127 

49. Sphagnum Enlarged 128 

50. Whip-case 129 

51. Sphagnum-leaf Magnified . 130 

52. Young Fern 133 

53. Leaf with Spore-cases on Back 134 



Illustrations. 7 

FIG. PAOK 

55. AlR-VESSELS OF Fern 138 

56. Leaf of Fern 139 

57. Lady's-sltpper 143 

58. Butterfly Orchid 144 

59. Climbing Orchid 145 

60. Young Plant growing on Flower Stem 147 

61. Honey Pouch and Pollen Pods 151 

62. Pencil and Needle, with Pollen 154 

63. Butterfly's Proboscis, with Pollen 155 

64. Corn and Magnified Root .162 

65. Geranium Pistil 165 

66. Geranium Stamen and Pollen Grains 166 

67. Pistil of Heart's-ease 170 

68. The Bean. First Leaves ln different Stages . .174 

69. Movement of Root of Black Bean 175 

70. Morning-glories 176 

71. Yirglna Creeper 177 

72. Pads through the Microscope 178 

73. Dl\gram of Straight and Curved Stems 181 

74. Open-mouthed Pitcher 184 

75. Pitcher with Overhanging Hood and Clear Windows 185 

76. Pitcher-plant ln Bloom . 189 

77. Darllngtonia Californica 190 

78. Bladder-wort 191 

79. Bladder with Captured Prey 191 

80. Sun-dew Plant 194 

81. Sun-dew Leaf Magnified, showing Tentacles . . . 196 

82. Leaves of Yenus's Fly-trap 201 

83. Australian Pitcher-plant 203 

84. Bird Trap 205 



CHAPTERS ON PLANT LIFE. 



Chapter I. 
INTRODUCTORY, 



You have read enough Indian stories, I am 
sure, to know how very different life among sav- 
ages is from ours. An Indian brave, if he has no 
family, is obliged to do all his own work. He 
makes his tent, or wigwam, hunts for his food, 
gathers sticks for his fire, cooks the animals he 
has captured — can live his simple life indepen- 
dent of the work of any other man. If he has a 
family, he only hunts, or fights for their protec- 
tion, while the women weave the mats, make the 
moccasins, cook, and even raise some poor, meagre 
crops. This is what is called a division of labor : 
not a very equal one in the case of the Indian. 



10 Chapters on Plant Life. 

It is found that when one man does one kind 
of work constantly, and another man another 
kind, that they each gain so much skill that there 
is a saving of time and labor. . If each exchanges 
with the other so much of the results of his labor 
as they need, they are better off. As people get 
more peaceful and wiser and more civilized, this 
division goes on more and more. 

Something like this civilizing may be seen in 
the vegetable world as we go from the simpler 
forms of life to those that are higher. Every 
plant is made up of one or more bodies called 
cells. The plant of a single cell is like a sin- 
gle Indian, and does its own work in growing 
and eating and breathing. Finally it produces 
more cells like itself. Small, simple plants, such 
as we shall see among the fairy fungi and odd 
fish, are either single savages, or savages in fam- 
ilies or tribes, banded together for protection 
and for ease in living, but each one capable of 
doing everything for itself if it has to. 



Introductory. 11 

The higher plants, such as every field and gar- 
den and wood afford, are like a great society, such 
as we live in and make parts of. Each cell of 
the thousands and thousands has its own work 
to do for the whole society, and depends not 
alone upon its own work, but in part upon the 
work of a great many others. 

If we were to try to study one of these plants 
with its different kinds of cells, at first we would 
be all puzzled and confused. Cells which were 
originally alike have so changed in appearance 
and work that we would learn very little. And 
so the world did learn very little as long as it 
tried to study in such a way. But of late years 
people have learned to begin with the A B C's 
of science, as well as of reading and writing. 
When we begin to take things up in this way, 
and arrange them in a sort of order, we find that 
it is not an order of our inventing, but the order 
in which God let them grow, way, way back 
thousands and thousands of years ago, when the 



12 Chapters on Plami Life. 

world was being gradually made. If God cre- 
ated them slowly, one after another, the easiest 
and simplest first, and then those that were less 
simple afterwards, that is certainly a good rea- 
son for studying them in this same order. 

I want to begin at the simplest single cell-plant, 
and try to make it clear to you how these little 
creatures live and grow and multiply. There are 
two great divisions in the plant world — the fun- 
gous plants and the green plants; and what is 
true of the tiniest members of these two divisions 
in regard to their breathing and eating, is true of 
the greatest. The small fungous plants, like yeast 
and mould and mildew, and the largest toadstools, 
live on other living or dead creatures; the green 
plants draw their food from the earth and air 
and water. As the fungi are the simplest of all, 
we will begin with them. 



A Fhwerless Flour* Garden. 13 



Chapter II. 

A FLOWERLESS FLOUR GARDEN. 

We all know, in a general way, that nothing 
grows unless it is alive, and yet who ever thinks 
of bread dough as having life in it ? There nev- 
er was a garden bed so full of living plants as 
is the loaf when it is moulded into shape, and 
ready to be put into the oven. If you have nev- 
er watched the mixing of bread, I would advise 
you to go and look at it the first chance you 
have, for it is a very curious and entertaining bit 
of gardening. The cook first prepares her seed, 
which is the yeast. There are several ways of 
planting common flower-seed, and so there are of 
planting yeast. You may either soak the seed 
to make them sprout quickly, or you may start 
the little plants in a hot-bed ; or, again, you may 



14 Chapters on Plant Life. 

buy your young seedlings, and transplant them 
into your own garden plot. Just so you may 
get your yeast seed ready to plant. The yeast 
cake may be only melted in warm water, or it 
may be set to start in a cup of water and flour 
by the warm kitchen fire, or you may buy the 
yeast already grown at the baker's. 

When the seed or seedlings are ready, the gar- 
den plot is prepared. The cook heaps up in her 
bread bowl quarts of snowy flour. Into this 
heap, after making a hole, she pours her pre- 
pared yeast. Working the bread is only an- 
other name for the careful scattering of the seed 
through all the dough, that it may spring up 
and grow, and fill the whole mass with the tiny 
plants. 

The yeast plant is not a common kind of plant, 
but belongs to the same class as mushrooms and 
toadstools (Fig. 1), and the fuzzy, cottony growth 
that we call mould. There are two kinds of 
plants that we may find almost anywhere in the 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 



15 




Fig. 1.— Toadstools. 



fields and woods, and even in the city yards — the 
fungi and the green plants. The yeast plant is 
one of the fungi. These are very different in 
most respects from the green plants: they can 
live and grow and thrive in darkness; they do 



16 Chapters on Plant Life, 

not have either leaves or flowers, and they usual- 
ly spring up and die very quickly. The greatest 
real difference between the two kinds is, how- 
ever, that the fungi live on food that has been 
alive before — on plants or animals or decaying 
matter — while the green plants live on what they 
get out of the earth, and the air, and the water. 
The simplest of all the fungi is the yeast plant. 
It begins its life as a tiny egg- 
dl ® ( tK & A shaped bag, or sac (Fig. 2, a). 
a /\) nIL ft This cell, as it is called, is 
© %|v I! filled with a very curious jel- 

Fia.2.-YEASTPL^ l 7> perhaps the most wonder- 
(Tomice.) ful thing in all the w r orld. It 

a ' "*£££ gr ° W ' is fo ™ d in everything that 
lives and grows. By its help 
the little yeast plant can take the flour and wa- 
ter, and can change it so that while the paste is 
used up and disappears, the cells grow larger 
and sprout out buds. You have particles of this 
jelly, or protoplasm, lining your mouth and stom- 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 17 

ach, and the food you eat is changed into flesh 
and blood and bones by this wonder-working 
magician. In the figures, the grainy substance is 
the protoplasm. 

This jelly all seems to be pretty much alike, no 
matter in what plant or animal you find it ; but 
there is some marvellous difference somewhere — 
a difference that science has never reached. The 
yeast cell takes in certain food, and grows, but it 
never makes anything but other or larger yeast 
cells. The food you eat and digest makes just 
you ; more of you, perhaps, but still you, your- 
self, and nobody else. 

Like all living things, the tiny yeast cell must 
both eat and breathe, or it will die. It feeds, not 
by opening its mouth and taking in its food, but 
by lying bathed in it, and soaking it up through 
its skin. When the cook dissolves her yeast 
cake, and puts it into the mixture of flour and 
water we call dough, she is putting the little 
plant into its food bath. The cells which have 



18 Chapters on Plant Life. 

been so long in prison, shut up in the darkness 
and cold of the dried yeast, begin to look alive, 
and stretch themselves, and enjoy their liberty. 
They take kindly to their food right away, and 
begin helping themselves to what they find about 
them. They do not merely soak up the flour 
and water in which they are plunged, but they 
manage to extract from the compound just what 
they need to make them grow. 

The cells must not only feed in order to live, 
but they must breathe, they must somehow get 
oxygen, which is the gas that our breathing 
takes out of the air. And this they extract, as 
a miner does iron, by separating it from its ore. 
There is a certain amount of sugar in wheat, 
which gives to good bread and to cracked wheat 
their delicate sweetness of flavor. Sugar is made 
up of a number of different substances, which the 
yeast cell has the power of separating. It takes 
the oxygen for its own use, and leaves behind 
the other things that make up the sugar. The 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 19 

change that 2oes on in the flour and water dous;h 
under the influence of the growing yeast plant is 
called fermenting. 

Feeding and breathing in this way, by taking 
what it needs from the flour, the cell grows. 
When it has reached its mature size, it rests qui- 
etly for a while, as if it were gathering strength 
for the effort, and then it sends out a little bud, 
which grows like the parent cell, until another 
bud sprouts from the end of the new sac. When 
this is grown, it is very unlike our notion of a 
plant; it is really nothing more than a little 
chain of sacs growing end to end. As soon as 
the little plant has exhausted all the sugar and 
food substance of the flour, it stops growing, the 
cells separate and remain quite still. 

There is just one time in the growth of the 
plant when the dough is right for baking. Be- 
fore it has grown enough, the bubbles through 
the dough are too few or too small, and the 
bread, if baked at this stage, would be heavy. 



20 Chapters on Plant Life. 

These bubbles are the carbonic acid gas left be- 
hind when the oxygen has been taken out of the 
sugar, and there must be plenty of them to make 
the bread light. If the bread is left too long to 
rise, the cells get more than their share of the 
wheat-sugar, and the bread is sour. Just at the 
right stage, which every good bread -maker can 
tell by experience, a thorough baking will de- 
destroy the alcohol — which is one of the things 
left behind while the yeast is growing — and the 
bread will be both sweet and light. 

When the yeast plant is sowed on the top of 
the flour and water, instead of being buried in 
it, all this is very different. The plant takes its 
food from the paste, but it does not need the 
sugar to supply it with oxygen, so it lets that 
alone. It can get its oxygen in a much simpler 
way, right from the air, as we do, and does not 
need to go through the labor of smelting it out 
of the sugar. The raising of our bread by yeast 
is entirely due to the efforts of the tiny cells to 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 



21 



get a breath of air when we have smothered 
them up in the dough. 

There are other plants besides the yeast plant 
that act in the same way. Have you never 
heard your mother say, when she opened a jar 







: 



Fig. 3.— Mould. 

{Penicillium.) 



W 



of preserves, " These are all right, I know, for 
they are covered with mould ?" Mould is a 
good deal like yeast in some things; if the germ 
cell, or spore, falls upon the top of the sweet- 



22 Chapters on Plant Life. 

meats, it can get plenty of oxygen from the air, 
and so lets the sugar alone. But if it is nearly 
drowned in the sirup, it will get its oxygen 
somehow, and so the sugar has to be sacrificed, 
and the preserves are left to spoil. What else 
could you expect of such little mischief-makers 
if you shut them up with the sweetmeats? 

The yeast plant is so very, very small that you 
cannot see it except with a very fine magnifying 
glass. But there are other plants like it which 
are large enough to be seen with a small and not 
a costly microscope.* These are what we call 
moulds. If you want to study moulds, nothing 



* There is a little microscope which can be gotten from James 
W. Queen, 924 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, called the Child's Mi- 
croscope, No. 3055, price $3 00, with three lenses. It is in a small 
walnut box, has a little mirror, stand, two dissecting needles, box 
for live insects, etc., a pair of forceps, watch glass, and plain slides. 
It magnifies about thirty-three diameters (nearly 1000 times in area), 
and gives a good clear image, besides having the advantage of be- 
ing an excellent pocket glass, even if you should buy a more costly 
instrument hereafter. 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 23 

is easier than to prepare them. Mix a spoonful 
of flour with cold water, and spread the paste 
over the bottom of a plate or saucer. In a few 
days it will be covered all over. If you put it 
in a damp and dark place, the mould will sprout 
sooner. You might put away a piece of bread 
at the same time, and you will find it covered 
with a growth too. 

Take a bit of this paste on the blade of a 
knife, and examine it carefully. You will see 
among the -cottony fibres a number of little up- 
right stems with black or white or yellow heads, 
which give the mould a speckled look. Under 
the microscope you see a perfect jungle of growth 
— a tangle of threads, which look like spun 
glass, running here and there and everywhere. 
From these, which serve as roots to the mould, 
the stems spring up, bearing, instead of leaves 
or flowers, tiny glistening toadstools that look 
as if they were made out of a pearl ; or some- 
times the heads are like strings of little pearls 



24 Chapters on Plant Life. 

(Fig, 3), or at others they are rosettes of such 
strings (Fig. 4, a). The black and sage-green 
colors come later, and are the fruit or seed -bear- 
ing portion of the plant (Fig. 4, b). 




Fig. 4— Mould. 
(Aspergillus.) 

a, Rosette Heads ; &, Fruit. 

On my saucer of paste I found in one place a 
plantation of delicate yellow fungi. The stems 
came up thick, with the little round fruit at the 
end of each, looking as if the whole thing was 
carved out of amber. In another place, over the 
yawning caverns made by the cracks in the paste, 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 



25 



there were delicate forms like grasses in seed, all 
looking like spun glass. The largest kind of 
common mould, which you may see in Fig. 5, is 
not so beautiful as these I have just described, 
but it shows very well the way the fungi grow 




Fig. 5.— Mould. 

{Mucor. ) 
a, Stalk ; 6, same opened ; c, outer skin broken, and spores scattering. 

and form their seed, and then sow themselves. 
This plant is easily seen with the naked eye, 
but looked at through the Child's Microscope, 
you see a great deal more. The stalks look as 
they do in Fig. 5, a. If you are so fortunate as 



26 Chapters on Plant Life. 

to have a large microscope, and watch them from 
day to day, you will see them look as they do in 
Fig. 5, b y and finally, when the outer skin breaks, 
like <?, in the same illustration. 

A single spoonful of flour will give you this 
wonderful garden, with its crop of yeast plant, if 
you sow the seed ; or, if you trust to luck, its har- 
vest of chance -sown mould. The air is full of 
these spores of the mould plants, and wherever 
they find a place they will take possession of it, 
and grow up without planting or cultivating, as 
weeds do. You can be certain of your yeast 
crop, because you have sowed it ; but you must 
take your chances with the mould. You are al- 
most sure, however, to find in any saucer of paste 
the different kinds described and pictured in 
Figs. 3, 4, and 5. 

The toadstool, whose picture (Fig. 1) is the 
first of all the fungi given here, is much larger 
than the mould, but almost as simple. It is 
made up of millions upon millions of little cells 



A Flowerless Flour Garden. 27 

in strings or in flat plates, most of them like each 
other. This is very different from the cells in the 
higher kinds of plants ; they have different kinds 
of cells for different purposes, as we shall see 
after a while. 

It is worth while sometimes to get away from 
the every-day world, and learn the wonders that 
are to be found within the fairy ring to which 
the microscope admits us. 



28 Chapters on Plant Life. 



Chapter III. 
THE FAIRY FUNGI. 

The hill - sides of the southern part of France 
are covered with vineyards, where the luscious 
grapes round out under the late summer sun- 
shine into globes of delicious sweetness. When 
the grapes are ripe, the peasants — men, women, 
and children — may be seen gayly trooping to 
the vineyards to pick them for wine. In the 
famous Steinburger vineyard the pickers are all 
girls about eighteen years old. Each girl has a 
row to pick, and they begin together, and move 
forward as steadily and evenly as a regiment of 
soldiers. With their gay petticoats looped up so 
that they may not brush off the ripe grapes, and 
their bright stockings and mittens, they make a 
very pretty picture moving along between the 



The Fairy Fungi. 29 

rows, snipping the ripe grapes, and letting them 
drop into their baskets. When the baskets are 
full they are emptied into a tub, which the men 
lift by leathern straps and carry to the roadside 
press. The juice which comes spurting out of 
the press is placed in vats or barrels, and there 
left to ferment, which changes the juice, or must, 
into wine. When the cook wants her bread to 
ferment, or rise, she plants it with yeast ; but the 
wine has nothing planted in it, and yet it ferments. 
Pasteur, the great French chemist, made up his 
mind to find why this was. He was convinced 
from all his studies in fermentation that the rea- 
son would be found in some little plant which 
was growing in the juice and helping itself to 
whatever it needed to eat or to breathe. He set 
to work to find out where the plants came from 
which turned the grape juice into wine. All his 
experiments are so fully and clearly explained 
that any one who is willing to take the pains 
can try them for himself. 



30 Chapters on Plant Life. 

He found that there was no fungus growing 
inside the little closed bag (which we call skin) 
in which the pulp, seed, and juice of the grape 
are sealed up. There is no opening anywhere in 
a sound grape through which spores (which are 
the fungus seed) could enter. But he found on 
the skin of the grape, and thickly over the stem, 
little plants, something like yeast and something 
like mould; these make up in part what is 
called the bloom of the grape. He put some 
water, with these plants mixed through it, into 
a tightly sealed bottle, and into another he put 
the pure juice of the grapes which had none of 
the little plants through it, and then waited to 
see what would happen. In a few days the wa- 
ter was all yeasty, and the grape juice was un- 
changed (Fig. 6). He tried this same thing over 
and over and over again, and in various ways, 
to be sure that he was right. He thus found 
that the little magician that turns the juice into 
wine is always waiting at the door of the sealed 




Fig. 6.— Grape Fungus. 



The Fairy Fungi. 33 

chamber, ready to work its miracle as soon as it 
can reach the juice. 

The case is very different with beer. Pasteur 
gave a great deal of time and attention to finding 
out why so many millions of gallons of beer were 
every year spoiled in the making. The brewers 
could not tell why. They prepared their wort 
in just the same way, and planted just the same 
amount of yeast into the good beer as they did 
in what turned out to be bad. He brought that 
wonderful microscope of his to bear upon the 
subject. He found that whenever the wort was 
planted with yeast which had certain curious 
little glassy rods mixed through it, the beer 
turned sour. The brewer, when he put such 
yeast as this into his wort, was planting, along 
with the seeds of the yeast plant, seeds of a 
troublesome weed. The sour beer was really 
only a very queer kind of a liquid garden, grow- 
ing more weeds than useful plants. 

Vinegar is another thing made by these little 



34 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 

fairy fungi. The cider out of which it is made 
is set away in a cask to ferment. The spores 
that work the change in this case are floating 




Fig. 7.— -Potato Fungus. 
(Botrytis infestans.) 

in the air, and manage somehow to get into the 
open cask. Did you ever notice the flakes of 
muddy - looking substance at the bottom of a 
vinegar cruet? That is the mother, the little 
plant that has made the cider into vinegar. 



The Fairy Fungi. 35 

These are some of the useful things that are 
done by the fungi, and they are certainly very 
valuable services. We owe to them our bread 
and wine and beer and vinegar. But they are 
not always benevolent fairies by any means. 




Fig. 8.— Leaf Mildew. 
(JZcidium.) 

Sometimes we are inclined to think that they 
are at the bottom of pretty much all the mischief 
in the world. If they were not sailing about in 
every breath of wind, getting into all sorts of 
places where they are not wanted, we probably 



36 Chapters on Plant Life. 

would never have any chills and fever or diph- 
theria, and the yellow fever would not sweep off 
its thousands and tens of thousands. If these 
little floating spores did not get into every crack 
and cranny, wounds would not fester, damp linen 
would not mildew, preserves and pickles would 
not mould, milk would not sour, nothing would 
spoil or ferment or decay. There is an old prov- 
erb that " the mother of mischief is no bigger 
than a midge's wing." I sometimes wonder if 
the old-time people that made the proverbs did 
not know something of these tiny mischiefs that 
only seem to be waiting the chance to work their 
naughty will, 

There is one case where this change takes 
place which you have probably often seen. 
When I was a child I used to be very fond of 
getting from the woods close to the house, or 
from the wood - pile, bits of shining wood and 
bark, which we called " fox fire." The wood was 
always old and decaying, and we thought it was 




The Fairy Fungi. 37 

shining because it was dying. But really the 
perishing wood was covered all over with tiny 
mushrooms, which shone with a light something 
like the glimmer of a fire-fly. In some countries 
this brightness is very wonder- 
ful. In Australia people have 
been able to read by the light 
of a shining stump overgrown 
with luminous fungi. 



Some of the fungi have not "^^^^j 

• t ., ,.1 Fig. 9. — Rye Smut. 

even the manners to wait until (Cordyceps.) 
their victims are dead. They 
take possession of living plants and animals, and 
never rest until they have destroyed them. The 
disease among potatoes called the potato-blight 
(Fig. 7), of which we hear so much, is caused by 
the growth of a little fungous plant in the 
mouths, or breathing holes, on the skin of the 
potato, and the blight and mildew (Fig. 8) and 
smut of wheat and corn and rye (Fig. 9) are all 
due to the same cause. The mouldy look upon 



38 Chapters on Plant Life. 

vine leaves is nothing else. I put a leaf of Vir- 
ginia creeper, which looked whitish and ugly, 
under the microscope one day, and found the 
whole surface covered with a net- work of silvery 
threads, with a wonderful fruit growing upon it. 
The fruits looked like peeled oranges surrounded 
with threads of spun sugar, or occasionally like a 
gigantic blackberry sparkling with crystals. This 
was only a common mildew, but under the mag- 
nifier it seemed a wonderful garden, growing con- 
serves and fairy fruits, and was beautiful beyond 
description (Fig. 10). 

The silk -worm is attacked by a fungous plant 
(Fig. 11). It takes possession of the worm just 
before it begins to spin its cocoon, and some years 
ago it destroyed such multitudes that the French 
silk trade was seriously threatened. The micro- 
scope was again brought into use, and the cause 
of the trouble discovered, and the cure effected. 

The untiring Pasteur studied up this and other 
diseases of the silk- worm as he did those of wine 




Fig. 10.— Mildetv on Virginia Creeper. 

{Erysiphe.) 



The Fairy Fungi. 



41 



and beer, and helped the silk-worm growers to 
stamp out the disease when it appeared. It per- 
haps seems a small thing for a man of genius like 




Fig. 11.— Silk- worm Fungus. 

(Botrytis bassiano.) 



Pasteur to give his whole life to studying these 
little plants through the microscope, but never 
was a life more helpfully and patriotically spent. 
Hundreds of thousands of the French peasants 
depended for daily food and shelter upon what 
they earned in the wine and beer and silk trades, 
and these trades Pasteur's work has saved from 



42 Chapters on Plant Life. 

destruction or great loss. It has been said that 
his work with the microscope has saved to 
France more money than the awful French Rev- 
olution cost her. 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 43 



Chapter IV. 
ODD FISH IN THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 

I must begin by telling you that these " odd 
fish " are very little fish indeed, so small that you 
could not make out anything about them unless 
you used a magnifying-glass. But if you do, you 
will be rewarded by seeing some very wonderful 
things. 

Let us go out into the yard ; it does not make 
much difference whether it is a great country 
garden, with beds of vegetables edged with flow- 
ers and threaded by pleasant walks, or a little, 
narrow, paved, cooped -up city yard, we will be 
pretty sure to find what we want. Every wa- 
ter-butt and horse-trough, every little puddle left 
by the rain (if it has stood long enough) is sure 
to be swarming with one kind or another of these 



44 Chapters on Plant Life. 

curious little creatures. If you have no such col- 
lections of water, look, and perhaps you will find 
in the shady corner of your yard a wet, slimy 
green moss coating the bricks. This you will 
find, if you examine it through your magnifying- 
glass, to be made up of thousands and thousands 
of little green cells. Each of these is one of 
our odd fish coiled up and asleep. I call them 
fish, though they are true plants, because they 
live in the water, or very damp places where 
there is enough water for them — though it would 
not be good swimming ground for larger plants 
or animals — and they go swimming about seek- 
ing for food, every now and then settling down 
to the bottom as if they were tired and wanted 
to go to sleep. 

One of the commonest of these — it has a long 
Latin name, which means " first-berry " — is also 
one of the most interesting. The first time I 
ever saw it I remember my astonishment. I took 
about a teaspoonful of water out of a little stag- 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 



45 



nant pool that the rain had left in the garden, 
and poured it into the crystal of a watch. I put 
it under niy microscope and looked in. The lit- 
tle round watery world under my eye was all 
alive with busy creatures, dashing here and there 






or 



o w 



E 



0^0 o 



Fig. 12.— First-berry Fish. 

A, moving; d d, cilia; B, still; (7, multiplying; D, red snow-plant; 

E, baby berries swimming freely. 

and everywhere. Among other things I found 
my queer little first-berry fish. He was long and 
pear-shaped, and moved small end foremost. I 



46 Chapters on Plant Life. 

could not see how he managed it, but I knew 
where to look to find his swimmers (Fig. 12,^4). 
Coming out from the two little peaks at the 
small end there were, I knew, two fine threads 
called cilia (d d) — meaning eyelash, because of 
their shape. With these he whipped through the 
water, moving himself along just as you do with 
your arms when you are swimming. For a while 
I could not see the lashes, they were moving so 
fast, but after a long time one of the funny little 
fellows seemed to get tired, he " slowed up," and 
then the eyelashes could be seen. You see in 
the picture (Fig. 12, A) the berry -fish moving; 
d d are his swimmers. At B he is coiled up at 
rest. If you were to keep them and look at them 
every little while for several days as I did, you 
would see a change taking place inside the still 
cell, B. The whole inner part divides in two, 
then each of these halves divide again, and so 
on till the inside jelly is divided up into smaller 
parts ; each one of these parts rounds up till the 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 47 

whole inside of the berry looks like a cluster of 
small berries (Fig. 12, C) enclosed in the outer 
shell. Finally, the old shell softens and melts 
away, and then instead of one mother berry you 
have a whole flock of baby berries that scatter 
themselves, and soon go lashing about merrily 
through the water like fish again. At D, in the 
same figure, you may see another member of the 
family of berry-fish, only he lives in the snow in 
Greenland and other far north countries. In- 
stead of being green, this snow-plant is red, and 
the millions of them scattered through the snow 
give to it a bright red color. I think you must 
have read something of the wonderful red snow 
in the Arctic regions, and now you know why' 
it is so. 

In the same little spoonful of water you may 
be so fortunate as to find another moving thing 
that looks like an eel as it goes wriggling about 
among the other fish. These are really stiff 
spirals, like a furniture spring, only longer and 



48 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



narrower. They move in several different ways ; 

in some one end swings backward and forward 

like the pendulum of 
a clock, others wriggle. 
The movement that 
seems to be wriggling 
is really the turning 
round and round of 
the spiral, just as a 
spinning-top does. Try 
the movement with a 
corkscrew held in 
place at tip and han- 
dle and quickly spun 
around, and you will 
see for yourself (Fig. 
13). Some of the 
forms here (Fig. 13, H) 
are the little mischief- 

FIG. 13.-EEL-PLANT. ^^ Qf ^^ J ^ 

A y 2>, vibrios ; B, C, E, <?, spirillums ; 

h, bacteria. telling you in the last 




Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 49 

chapter, which cause meat to decay and spoil — 
bacteria they are called. A great many of them 
together, turning round in this way, naturally get 
tangled up into lumps. When one of these is 
placed on a sheet of paper, the separate little 
wrigglers often form a star-shaped figure which 
is very pretty. 

If you have ever spent any time at the sea- 
shore, you must have seen queer lumps of jelly 
in the sand, and been told, if you were interested 
enough to ask, that they were jelly-fish. The 
vegetable world has its jelly-fish too. Some- 
times floating on ponds, sometimes on damp or 
mossy ground, lumps of a clearish jelly will be 
found, very curious to look at and very myste- 
rious in their coming. They are really a kind of 
water-plant. All through the mass are rows of 
round cells, like strings of beads, coiled up in 
great masses, and held together by the jelly that 
oozes out of them. A new colony is formed by 

the jelly melting up enough to let the strings 

4 



50 Chapters on Plant Life. 

of cells get free; they begin wriggling, and at last 
get out of the jelly prison, grow and spread, and 
finally make a new colony like the one they came 
from. Sometimes a quantity of the dried -out 
jelly will be lying on a brick walk or some such 
place. No one would notice it in this state. 
With the first rain, however, the cells all swell 
up, and a lump of jelly appears as if by magic. 
These are sometimes called "fallen stars" by 
country people, who think they must have fallen 
from the sky. 

Your watch-glass pond may perhaps contain 
another form which is interesting to watch with- 
out a magnifying-glass, but far more interesting 
with one. It looks to the naked eye like a little 
globe, not so large as a pin's head, of nearly clear 
green glass, with tiny specks of a deeper green 
through it. It goes rolling over and over and 
around in the water, not very fast, but pretty 
much all the time. Now let us put him under 
the microscope and see what he looks like. We 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 



51 



see globes of a deep green enclosed in a lacy net- 
work of a beautiful pale green color (Fig. 14,^4). 
B shows this net -work still more magnified. 
You can see without my telling you that the 
net-work is made up of hundreds and hundreds 
of our little berry-fish fastened together by clear 
bands of a jelly-like material. The smaller and 
greener balls within the net are new colonies 
growing up to full size. When this happens, the 
outer globe bursts and lets the inner globes free, 
and so it goes on, each globe having globes with- 
in it like a Chinese ball puzzle. 





Fig. 14. 

J., colonies of first-berry fish ; J5, part of the same magnified. 



52 Chapters on Plant Life. 

I wish I could give you a peep through my 
large microscope at the last kind of fish I am 
going to show you. These are a sort of vegeta- 
ble shell-fish, and are found in all kinds of water — 
salt, fresh, and brackish. In the mountain brooks 
near West Point they grow in such multitudes 
that the beds of the streams are covered about 
one-quarter of an inch with them. Every stone 
and stick and twig is glistening with them. In 
other places they have been found in such quan- 
tities that the beds of rivers and the mouths of 
harbors have been choked up with them. The 
numbers you may get some idea of when I tell 
you that it takes sixteen millions of some kinds 
to fill a box one inch square, and these are a 
large kind. 

Nothing in nature is more wonderful and 
beautiful, when magnified, than these shells. 
They are of the purest glass, of every imaginable 
shape, ornamented with the most delicate pat- 
terns. No drawing can give you an idea of 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 



53 





b^ B 





Fig. 15.— Vegetable Shell-fish. 

A, on stem ; B, fastened by corners : a, top view ; 6, 2, shell inside the 
band ; C, top of new box ; 2), side view of box. 

their great beauty. Here are a few of the shells. 
Some of them grow on stems (Fig. 15, A) ; some 
are attached together by their corners and live 
in long chains (£) ; others are free. They are of 



54 Chapters on Plant Life. 

all sorts of queer shapes. Like the " first-berry," 
they move about, but their movements are a 
curious jerking advance and retreat, which seems 
to have no sense in it. 

Now look at Fig. 15, C. You see it looks some- 
thing like a three-cornered box, C being the top 
and D the side view; the upper shell is fitted 
over the lower, just as the lid of a pill -box fits 
over the lower part. Inside is the jelly-like body 
of the plant. Like others of this family, the 
plant grows by the enlarging of living cells, 
which then divide up into two. This is easy 
enough in soft cells, but of course if it enlarged 
as we saw it do in the "first-berry," the beau- 
tiful glass shell would be broken to pieces. 
Now pay close attention while I try to explain 
how these curious little things manage to grow, 
and save their shells too. The jelly inside gets 
bigger ; that pushes the lid up and partly off the 
bottom of the box. To keep any of the jelly 
from being unprotected, a band like a fiat brace- 



Odd Fish in the Vegetable World. 



55 



let of glass covers the edges, and grows wider as 
is needed. All this has been very carefully 
watched under the microscope. The jelly inside 
divides into two parts, and then one part of the 
jelly takes the old lid, and the other the old 
bottom for new lids, and inside the band each 
builds itself half a new shell (Fig. 15, B, b). So 




Fig. 16.— Vegetable Shell-fish. 

J., B t C, successive stages in the formation of seed shell ; 

a, old shells ; 6, seed shells. 

two new shell -fish are made out of one; when 
this is done the band falls off, whole or in pieces, 
and leaves them each ready to begin this over 
again. 

Sometimes two of the shells come near to each 



56 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 

other, and surround themselves with a kind of 
jelly (Fig. 16, A). After a while in the midst of 
this jelly appears a curious-looking shell (Fig. 16) 
entirely different from the ones it comes from. 
This is the seed of new shell-fish plants, like those 
which produced it (Fig. 16, D, shells a a, seed 
shell, h). 

In the ages, long ago, when the world was 
making, these little plants had a good time of it. 
They grew in such quantities that their shells 
have made great beds of earth. The city of 
Eichmond, in Virginia, is built upon such a bed, 
and millions upon millions of them can be found 
in a handful of the common earth. 



Lichens. 57 



Chapter V. 
LICHENS. 

It is not uncommon to find among; animals a 
curious kind of house -keeping arrangement, by 
which they live together, each one helping to 
keep up the establishment, and all having equal 
rights. Oftener, however, we find one animal 
quietly settling down upon another, expecting to 
be supported in idleness. This is not only true 
of animals; it is equally true of plants. Some of 
the very smallest of them are as proud and inde- 
pendent as the largest ; they busy themselves all 
day extracting their food out of the earth and 
air, earning their own living in a most praise- 
worthy way, and ready to lend a helping hand 
to others. The u dead-beats" of the vegetable 
world are most commonly found among the lower 
classes — the fungi. 



58 Chapters on Plant Life. 

You remember, in studying the fungi we found 
that one thing — the principal thing — which mark- 
ed their difference from the green plants was that 
they are obliged to feed on what has been some 
time a living substance, whether vegetable or 
animal. The yeast-plant and moulds and mush- 
rooms feed upon dead material, that which is no 
longer alive ; but there are other fungi that prey 
upon living things — some of these we have al- 
ready studied (Figs. 6, 7, 11) in the chapter on 
the fairy fungi — such as the grape fungus, the 
potato blight, and the silk- worm fungus. These 
forms of fungus life seem in most cases to be a 
kind of disease. But there are still other forms 
which are even more curious. 

Have you not, hundreds of times, in the w r oods 
noticed how old tree trunks and twigs, particu- 
larly dead ones, were covered with a curious 
crust, sometimes gray and sometimes greenish in 
hue ? Occasionally you have found them bright 
orange, and again holding up coral-red cups to 



Lichens. 59 

the sun and rain. These are not mosses, as you 
often hear them called. In fact, they have no 
correct ordinary name, and so get their botanical 
name of lichens oftener than any other. 

One of the most singular things in the study 
of all plants are these same plants, and it took a 
great many long years of study to find out their 
ways. A lichen is really a peculiar kind of a fun- 
gus, growing on and sucking its nourishment out 
of a little green water-plant, which manages to 
support both itself and its " dead-beat " neighbor. 
For a long time the little green cells that flour- 
ished so bravely in the clutch of the lazy giant 
of a fungus were thought to be the fruit of the 
fungus. After long studying and examining, 
some keen- sighted botanist saw that the green 
cells were no more nor less than our little " first- 
berry," being eaten out of house and home by 
his lazy visitor. He collected the green cells of 
the plant, and, to test the matter, he sowed them, 
and watched what became of them; they grew 



60 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



apace, and when they came to move about he 
found that he was not mistaken : they were, sure 
enough, the " first-berry." 




i 

Fig. 17.— Lichen Magnified. 
a, fungus ; &, host. 

You see in Fig. 17 how the twining arms of 
the lichen, a, embrace the "first-berry," #, and 
push their way into the very heart of the cell to 
take away its food. For some reason it does not 
overpower and kill its little host — possibly it 
may in some unknown way pay board in serv- 
ices, but nobody has ever found it out if such 
is the case — though it is a fact that some of the 



Lichens. 61 

tiny plants so preyed upon, instead of being hin- 
dered in their growth, seem to be rather stimu- 
lated by the demand upon them. 

All these lower forms of life, including the 
fungi, odd fish, and lichens, are called by a Latin 
name meaning that the plant is all leafy. -They 
have no distinct stems and roots, they all seem to 
be just something like a leaf. In lichens this 
leafy crust is called a thallus — it has no correct 
common name. 

The thallus creeps on chips of decaying wood, 
bark, or small branches, diving down into the 
cells of the green plant below to feed itself, and 
sending up into the air the little cup or heads, 
which are its fruit. Some of the gray, woolly 
lichens that cover twigs growing near the sea- 
shore, or down in mossy dells, have what seem 
like stems ; but they are not true stems, the cells 
inside are different from stem cells (Fig. 1 8) and 
like those of the leaves. We have to learn, in 
studying nature, "not to judge according to ap- 



62 



Chapters on Plant Life. 







Fig. 18. — Woolly Lichen. 

(Usnea barbata.) 



pearance, but to judge righteous judgment." It 
is by the lives of these little creatures, not by 



Lichens. 63 

their mere outward appearance, that we know 
their real character. 

Lichens are good things to study in winter, for 
you can find them when other plants are having 
their long sleep. They grow everywhere, and on 
pretty much everything that has crevices in which 
their host can find moisture. 

The " first-berry " is by no means the only one 
of the " odd fish " which are hosts to the lichens. 
The vegetable jelly-fish, the red snow-plant, and 
others answer the same purpose. But whatever 
the host is, you cannot help feeling that he is 
ill-used. Sometimes one is almost smothered 
in the embrace of his ungrateful visitor and 
guest; sometimes another is fairly sucked dry 
by these sponges ; but the plucky little things 
manage to live somehow and bear the burden 
of life. 

Some of the lichens contradict the old saying 
that "beggars must not be choosers," for they 
will not live on any host but a particular one 



64 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



which suits them. Others are not so particular, 
and will take to any one which will afford them 
nourishment. 

Occasionally, among the hard dry growths that 
are the commonest forms of lichens, we find a 
kind that is like cold, clammy flesh. It grows in 
cushion-like masses. In these forms the poor 
little host is scattered in bunches through the 




Fig. 19. 

«, the fungus ; 6, the host ; c, the spore cup from which the spores arc 

escaping ; d, spores. 

(Collema.) 



Lichens. 



65 



fleshy mass, or runs through it like strings of 
glistening beads (Fig. 19, b). 

Lichens, like some plants higher in the scale 
of life, grow from spores. These produce new 
plants as seed do, but they are not seed. Seed, 







Fig. 20.— Encrusting Lichen. 

(Parmelia. ) 

as you will see when we come to them, are always 
made by the partnership of two entirely different 
cells combining together. Spores are more like 
a little bud growing out of the plant, and when 
it is ripe, getting loose from the place where it 

5 



66 Chapters on Plant Life. 

grew, and being scattered on the ground by the 
wind or the rain. They grow usually in some 
sort of cup, which holds them safely till they are 
ripe and free (Figs. 19 and 20). 

It would not seem that such sturdy little beg- 
gars and persistent sponges would be of much 
use in such a busy world as this ; and yet if it 
were not for them a large part of the world 
would be without inhabitants. All Lapland, you 
know, is inhabited by people whose living de- 
pends on the reindeer. In our climate we can 
scarcely imagine how people could depend so upon 
any one kind of animal. But the people there 
have nothing else; they eat the flesh, and drink 
the milk of the reindeer; their clothes are made 
from his skin, their tools are carved out of his ant- 
lers; his sinews supply thread, his bones, soaked in 
oil, they burn for fuel. Living, he is his master's 
horse and mule, carrying him and his belongings 
from place to place. The Laplander's whole 
mode of life depends upon these tiny little plants 












sm^ 



ii 



\ 



Fig. 21.— Reindeer Lichen. 
(OZo&mia.) 



Lichens. 69 

(Fig. 21), for when the reindeer have devoured all 
that is growing in one place, the Laplanders move 
bag and baggage, where they can find some more. 

In the short, hot summers the reindeer can get 
the fresh shoots of certain trees, but in winter 
there is nothing but the lichen under the snow. 
Besides being the only food they can get to eat, 
it seems to be necessary to them. When reindeer 
are brought to temperate climates as a show, it is 
found necessary to feed them on these lichens or 
something of the kind, or they will not keep well 
and hearty. As food the lichen has another ad- 
vantage, that it takes a great while to digest, and 
a meal will last for a long time, enabling the 
reindeer to take long journeys over the frozen 
snow-covered ground without a fresh meal. 

There is one kind of lichen which grows in 
great quantities in some parts of the far north 
countries. This is called the tripe de roche, or 
rock tripe, because it looks a little like tripe and 
because it can be eaten by men. Arctic travel- 



70 Chapters on Plant Life. 

lers, caught by the ice in these northern countries, 
have been kept alive for weeks, when they had 
no other food, by these lichens. It is one form 
or other of these tiny plants, which we scarcely 
even notice, that saves great regions of Arctic 
country from being a desolate no-man's land from 
end to end. 



Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 71 



Chapter VI. 

PLANTS AND ANIMALS— THEIR DIFFERENCE. 

If the question were put to you suddenly, 
" What is the difference between a plant and an 
animal?" how do you think you would answer? 
Stop a minute, and think. Do not be satisfied 
with saying that a plant has leaves, and an ani- 
mal has not. Look deeper, and answer more 
thoughtfully. There are many plants which have 
no leaves, nor roots, nor flowers ; this you know 
very well, for the only plants we have examined 
so far have had none of these things, and there 
are some animals which seem to have all of 
them, as you may see by looking at Figs. 22 
and 22a. In some cases they are so much alike 
(Figs. 23 and 24) that it has taken the most 
careful study to decide whether they are plants 
or animals. 



72 



Chapters on Plant Life. 




Fig. 22. — Animal Seaweed. 

(Plumularia. ) 



Look up into the 
bright blue sky, and 
then down at the solid 
earth beneath your feet 
— you do not find any 
difficulty in telling, 
without taking a mo- 
ment to think, which is 
sky and which is earth ; 
but if you are so happy 
as to live in the wide 
open country, or near 
the sea, or on a lofty 
hill, look off and off and 
off until 



you see 
only the delicate blue haze like 
smoke which divides the heavens 
from the earth. You can often see 
the same thing by looking from 
the upper windows of a high house. (Piumuiana.) 




Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 73 

You will find that many and many a time you 
cannot tell which is earth and which is air. 

Just so it is in the world of nature. You 
may look at a group of cows standing under 




Fig. 23. — Animal. 

(Coral polyps.) 

the trees, or watch the merry little grasshoppers 
skipping about in the weeds, or catch a bee at 
his early drink in a morning-glory bell, and you 
would laugh if anybody asked you if you could 
tell the animal from the plant. But get far 
enough away from these common things, and 
study the animals and plants that need your 
microscope to see them, and you would find 
things so much alike that you could not tell 



74 Chapters on Plant Life. 

which was which. Many of these plants have 
no roots nor leaves, no flowers nor seed, and 
many of the animals have no heads nor legs, 




Fig. 24. — Vegetable. 

{Mesenibrya7ithemum. ) 



no eyes, nor mouths, nor stomachs. In Fig. 25, 
a is a plant, and b is an animal. Now how do 
you suppose anybody knows this? People who 
study these things do not guess — they know. 



Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 75 

The real difference lies in what these tiny little 
creatures do, not at all how they are formed. 

About three -fourths of all the kinds of sea- 
weed, for instance, are found to be animal — not 
one animal, but a colony; the other fourth are 
vegetables. All these used to be considered* veg- 
etables ; so did the sponge, and the coral, and the 
sea-anemones, and they are all now known to be 




t&fflg§^ 








Fig. 25. — Water Plant and Water Animal. 

{Diatom.) (Foranimifer.) 

animals. Every time you play the game of 
"Twenty Questions" you have to think and 
decide whether the particular thing you have 
chosen is " animal, vegetable, or mineral." Have 
you any notion what makes the real difference 
between them ? 



76 Chapters on Plant Life. 

I imagine that, sooner or later, you will think 
and say the difference is that animals can move 
and plants cannot. That might have been a very 
sensible conclusion if you had come to it before 
you had studied anything about the curious odd 
fish in the vegetable world. It is not correct, 
you now know, for plants do move, some of them 
very much as animals do; others, and the greater 
number, in another way : which all seems very 
wonderful, and which I want to talk over after a 
while in the chapter on Climbing Plants. 

What makes the real, deep-down difference is 
this: Plants can live on mineral matters alone, 
on earth and water and air, and these things 
they can change into their own flesh and blood, 
their stems and sap and fruit. Animals can 
only live on what the plants have already 
turned from dead into living material. We need 
water — that is a mineral — and salt and air, which 
are minerals too, if we are to keep alive and 
well. But we cannot live on these things alone : 



Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 77 

we should soon die if we had no food ; and all 
really nourishing food, all that keeps our blood 
warm and makes us grow, has once been vegeta- 
ble. Not one bird or fish or animal, not one 
single human being, could ever have lived on 
this earth, in the air or in the water, if the plants 
had not come first, and prepared the earth for 
us to live in. 

These are " sure enough " fairies that are for- 
ever working their wonders for us. The roots, 
like elves, grope down in the earth, and gather 
its treasures; the leaves stretch out into the air, 
and gather its riches, and out of what they have 
collected they weave the beautiful flowers, and 
delicious fruits, and golden grain. 

I should like to make very clear just the way 
they do this ; it is very wonderful and beautiful 
to study how they work their spells. First, the 
root, as we shall see, armed with its little helmet, 
bores its way down into the earth. If it finds no 
water or damp earth it soon wilts and dies, but 



78 Chapters on Plant Life. 

if it finds a wet place it begins to soak up moist- 
ure. Besides the water, it sucks up all the parts 
of the earth that are dissolved in the water. The 
water it must have, and it will manage to live a 
while on that alone, as many starving men have 
done; but it cannot live so very long. Poor 
ground means ground that has little or no plant 
food in it. 

You know, if you ever did any gardening 
work, that you can stick a cutting of geranium 
or begonia into pure sand that has no nourish- 
ment at all in it, and that if you keep it well wa- 
tered the cutting will strike out roots and bear 
leaves. This is, in fact, the best way to start cut- 
tings, for mould is a little apt to rot the stem, 
but the sand preserves it. After a w T hile the 
baby plant is tired of doing nothing but sucking 
water, and cries for some stronger food. Then 
you must put it into rich earth, still giving it 
plenty of water. The roots, like the baby's stom- 
ach, will at first be satisfied with a very milk-and- 



Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 79 

watery diet, but after a while it must have a 
strengthening soup. 

The roots bring the plant a good deal, but the 
leaves are the principal feeders. Every leaf and 
»tem is supplied with millions of little mouths, 
which are usually open, breathing in the air, and 
breathing out moisture and the gases it cannot 




Fig. 26. — Liverwort Mouth or Room. 

use. These mouths bring; both food to nourish 
and air to sustain the plant. A fish keeps itself 
alive by sucking the water it lives in all the while 
through its gills. It gets out of the water what- 
ever it needs — air and some food. The plants 
are like fishes; their water is the great ocean of 
air that lies on the surface of the earth. They 



80 Chapters on Plant Life. 

draw it in through their mouths, take out of it all 
they need, and then breathe the rest out again. 
In Fig. 26 you see a piece of a liverwort leaf 
i 




Fig. 27.— Plant Mouth. 

hh, hollow of mouth ; ? ?, lips. 

{Iris.) 

cut down through the mouth, and in Fig. 27, 
another kind, a blue-flag. In the next chapter 
(Fig. 30, h) you see some of the mouths of the 
corn-plant; this is the outside view, as you see 
your own mouth in your face when you look in 
the glass. 

Air is a curious mixture. It is a gas made of 
several gases stirred together as you stir tea and 
milk and sugar. One of these gases is called 



Plcvnts and Animals — Their Difference. 81 

oxygen (don't be afraid of the hard names) ; that 
is what keeps us alive. I won't give you the 
name of the next, because it is only used, like the 
milk, to weaken the tea. The third is a very dis- 
agreeable and dangerous gas, called carbonic acid 
gas. It is this last that makes your head ache in 
a crowded room or car. This is what you hear 
of every now and then as choke-damp, which suf- 
focates people down in mines and deep wells. 
It is this which comes from burning charcoal, 
and makes it sure death to burn it in a closed 
room. There is very little of this dangerous stuff 
even in close air. Carbonic acid gas, though so 
poisonous, is made up of two things, which are 
very good and perfectly harmless when they are 
separated — carbon and the life-giving oxygen. 
Carbon is coal, or something like coal. United 
together, these two harmless things make a 
dreadfully dangerous one, just as innocent salt- 
petre, sulphur, and charcoal unite to form the 
deadly gunpowder. 



82 Chapters on Plant Life. 

Now notice how beautifully plants and ani- 
mals are made to live together and help each 
other. Animals breathe in the air, and help 
themselves to the oxygen which keeps them 
alive, but breathe out the deadly carbonic acid 
gas. Plants breathe in the air, separate, by some 
wonderful power of their own, the carbonic acid 
gas into carbon and oxygen, help themselves to 
the carbon and breathe out the oxygen. What 
plants consume we throw away as useless, and 
what plants breathe out sustains our life. That 
is the reason why the country is apt to be so 
much more healthy than the city. The air that 
is poisoned by people and fires becomes purified 
by plants. 

Unlike the fairies of the story-book, who do 
all their good deeds by night, these little plant 
fairies work only by the light. The sun is their 
master, and his first ray is their call from sleep. 
They set to work in a minute, separating the 
dangerous carbonic acid gas into carbon and 



Plants and Animals — Their Difference. 83 

oxygen ; and while they use the carbon and 
grow by it as you do by your food, they are 
giving back the sweet pure oxygen to the air. 
All day long they are at their good work; but 
when the sun sinks behind the hills, they do not 
need any sunset gun to tell them their time of 
rest has come. They drop work at once, and 
drop their fairy ways ; they begin right away to 
behave as the animals do — to breathe in oxygen 
and breathe out the hateful carbonic acid. That 
is the reason it is not healthy to sleep in a room 
with flowers at night, though they are so good to 
have in the daytime. 

We owe our lives to the plants — the food we 
eat, the pure air we breathe, as well as much of 
the rain that falls from heaven. They are min- 
istering angels, and the loving, tender, heavenly 
Father has appointed them their work to do — to 
beautify the earth and purify the air under the 
guidance of the glorious sun, which He has cre- 
ated and which He keeps in its appointed path. 



84 Chapters on Plant Life. 



Chapter VII. 
THE THIRSTY FLOWERS. 

Fill a glass with water, and let a piece of 
common tape or a strip of muslin hang so that 
its lower end shall dip into the water, and then 
notice it ; the liquid creeps slowly but surely up 
the strip. If the end which you have in your 
hand is dropped on the table beside the glass, 
the goblet may be entirely emptied, the water 
running up over the edge of the glass before it 
runs down again. This behavior of water would 
seem very queer if we had not noticed something 
of the kind all our lives. It is caused by what 
is called capillary attraction. Whenever one part 
of a material full of fine openings which lead 
through it is dipped into a liquid, the fluid runs 
through the whole stuff, even if it has to run up- 



The Thirsty Flowers. 85 

ward. Try a lump of sugar : put one corner into 
your cup of tea or hot milk, and watch it soak 
the lump through. The burning of a lamp is upon 
the same principle. The w r ick serves to carry the 
oil from the globe of the lamp to feed the flame. 
As soon as the oil gives out, the light fades, and 
dies away. 

Every part of a plant needs water ; it must be 
close around every little cell. These cells are the 
tiny queer- shaped bags full of liquid that are 
packed close together, and make up the leaves, 
stems, and flowers of plants. In Fig. 28 you see 
the cells of a leaf of geranium flower, and one of 
sorrel or sour grass, w r hich, if you are like the 
children I know, you have many a time eaten to 
get the pleasant sour taste. Well, every one of 
these tiny cells must be kept wet all the time, or 
the plant will die. The only way we can think 
of that water could get up into the leaves and 
flowers from the earth is by capillary attraction, 
as it runs up the strip of muslin. And if it were 



86 Chapters on Plant Life. 

not for this singular behavior of water, the only 
plants in the world would be those that grow in 
the seas and rivers and lakes. The land would 
be as barren as the desert of Sahara. 




A b 

Fig. 28.— Cells. 
A, leaf of geranium flower (Pelargonium):, B, leal of sorrel (Oxalis). 

Now r try to think of some plant with all the 
earth away — a tree, for instance — and you will 
see that it is a sort of double growth ; that there 
is an upside-down tree in the ground, with its 



The Thirsty Flowers. 87 

trunk and branches and twigs, as well as one 
above the ground. The underground twigs do 
not bear leaves, but each one of them wears on 
its head a little cap or helmet to protect the ten- 
der growing part from being injured as it pushes 
its way through the hard earth. The most im- 
portant parts of a tree are those that seem of least 
consequence, the rootlets and the leaves. These 
are to the tree. what our mouths and stomachs 
and our lungs are to us ; the roots are the feeders, 
and the leaves the breathing apparatus of plants. 
As the underground tree grows, the tender 
little roots push their w 7 ay down into the dark- 
ness and cold of the deep soil; they find their 
way around stones and through great clods of 
earth, anywhere and everywhere, until they get 
their little noses into water or damp earth, and 
then they begin to suck. Sometimes it is only 
pure water that they take up from the earth, but 
generally it is a sort of broth — water with plant 
food dissolved in it. 



88 Chapters on Plant Life. 

The roots and stems and leaves are all full ot 
little passageways running upward, and branch- 
ing and dividing until they reach the leaves. 
Fig. 29 shows a corn stalk cut across. You see 
some roundish holes, marked a; these are the 
ends of tubes that run through the stalk. When 
the corn begins to grow, take a stalk about two 
feet high, and cut it across; you will see little 
white spots all over the cut place. This figure is 




Fig. 29. — Corn Stalk cut Across. 
(Zea.) 

one of those white dots magnified. Figure 31 
is the same dot viewed sidewise. 

When these tubes come into the leaves, they 



The Thirsty Flowers. 



89 



open into little spaces just under the outside skin 
of the leaf. These spaces are like the hollow of 
a mouth, and each one has generally two lips that 






Fig. 30. — Plant Mouths. 

A y corn leaf with three mouths; i?, bean leaf, with mouth ; C, mouth 

seen sidewise. 

(Zea.) 

are sometimes open and sometimes shut. Through 
these tiny mouths (Fig. 30) the plant breathes. 



90 Chapters on Plant Life. 

It draws in air, and it sends out, as you do, a 
mixture of air and water. If you w r ant to know 
how much water there is in your own breath, try 
holding a piece of cold glass before your mouth. 

Plants are not wasteful of the water so neces- 
sary to their lives. What they do not use they 
give back to the air from which it was received, 
as we make our thank-offerings to God for what 
He has given us. The roots suck up the water, 
and each little cell takes a drink as the water 
passes it, and hands on the rest to the cell just 
above it. And so the water takes its course, 
supplying each thirsty cell with drink as it passes, 
spreading through every part of the plant until 
it reaches the little mouths. And there all that 
is left is breathed out in a fine steam which you 
cannot see until it touches some cold substances, 
and is turned into water again (Fig. 31). 

Some one who wanted to know exactly how 
much water was given back to the air by grow- 
ing plants, carefully examined a number of them, 



The Thirsty Flov:ers. 



91 



and found that a single sunflower plant gave off 
in twelve hours a pound and a quarter — enough 
to fill nearly to the brim three common table 
goblets. Another plant, the wild cornel, was 
found to breathe out more than twice its own 
weight of water in a day and a night. 

In order to find out what parts of the flowers 
were the principal water-carriers, a deutzia, one 
of our most delicate 
and beautiful spring 
flowers, which you 
probably know by 
sight if not by name, 
was put into some very 
blue water, colored 
with a mixture of what 
is called aniline, and 
in a little while every vein of the flower was a 
beautiful dark blue. The poor little blossom was, 
however, poisoned with its dose, and wilted away 
in a few minutes. 




Fig. 31. — Water -carrying 
Tubes. Side Ydzw of Corx- 
staek Tubes. 

(Zea.) 



92 Chapters on Plant Life. 

The quantity of water that plants breathe off 
is so great that it makes an entire change in the 
climate when forests are cut down. Plants, like 
grasses and small weeds that grow on the surface, 
of course do not make the same difference, for 
their roots only go down a little way. But trees 
are very important : unless the air is kept damp 
by the sea or some large body of water, it de- 
pends very much upon trees for its moisture. 
Where there are no trees, the rain that does fall 
sinks into the earth, and runs away in little un- 
derground currents, and is lost. There are no 
deep roots to stop this waste, to suck up the 
water, and restore a large part of it to the air. 

In places where the rainfall is frequent, and 
the air is always kept soft, plants may be as lavish 
of their water as we are in the great cities where 
the supply never fails. Plants growing in such 
places very often keep their mouths open all the 
time. If this were the habit of those which grow 
in very dry places, they would soon perish of 



The Thirsty Flowers. 93 

thirst. On the high Western plains beyond the 
Mississippi only a few things are able to live. 
Among these are some kinds of cactus plants, 




Fig. 32.— Cactus. 



which you have probably seen in greenhouses or 
as window plants (Fig. 32). The reason why they 
manage to grow such bulgy leaves and fat stems 
where there is so little moisture, is because this 



94 Chapters on Plant Life. 

plant is so very stingy of its water. It hoards it 
up as the travellers over the great African deserts 
do, knowing how hard it will be to get more. The 
roots of the cactus suck up every drop of water 
they can find, and the leaves keep their millions 
of little mouths tight shut so as to hold it all. 
Only such plants can grow on these plains as are 
able to do with very little water, or else are wise 
enough to hoard up all they can get. This water 
we have been talking about is not sap — that is 
the blood of the plant — but it is like the water 
we drink, and which not only helps to make the 
blood, but keeps all of the parts soft and moist 
so that it may live. The largest part of every 
living thing is water. It is not without good 
reason that the Bible so often speaks of the 
Water of Life, for without water no life could 
exist for a single hour. 



Plants Caught Napping. 95 



Chapter VIII. 
PLANTS CA TIGHT NAPPING. 

As we come to be more intimate with plants, 
and know all about their doings and see into 
their daily lives, we continue to find things which 
remind us of animals. Plants, we already know, 
eat and drink and breathe and move. Besides 
all these things, they sleep; and they must get 
their sleep regularly, or they lose their health 
completely. 

Nowadays inventors spend their lives trying 
to find out useful things — things that will make 
life easier and pleasanter: such things as steam- 
boats and railroad cars, and telegraphs and sew- 
ing-machines, and a thousand others of the same 
kind. In old times all the inventions were made 
to compel men to believe this or that religion by 



96 Chapters on Plant Life. 

the use of ingenious tortures. There was no end 
of different kinds of suffering which poor miser- 
able people who had their own ideas on religious 
subjects had to suffer. Among these was the 
horrible torture of keeping people awake night 
and day till they died. Such dreadful things 
are no longer practised on people in Christian 
lands; but many and many a poor plant dies 
and makes no sign from just this cause. 

People can sleep where there is a light in the 
room ; hardly so sweetly and soundly, I think, as 
they can in the darkness; still they can go to 
sleep in the light. But plants cannot. Until 
the darkness comes they go on working and 
working, no matter how tired they are, till the 
plucky little creatures drop in harness and die. 
The work they do, I have already told you, is to 
separate the poisonous carbonic acid gas of the 
air into two useful things — carbon for themselves, 
and oxygen to keep people and animals alive. 
But they need rest as much as you or I do. 



Plants Caught Napping. 



97 



Working night and day is too much of a strain, 
and finally their health breaks down and they 
die. 

Many plants are not contented merely to stop 
working. That does not give them all the rest 
they need. The leaves want to lie down or to 
hug close to each other, in order to sleep com- 
fortably and rise re- 
freshed. If you no- 
tice carefully a spray 
of locust leaves, for in- 
stance, by daylight, you 
will see it look some- 
thing like this (Fig. 
33). I drew this, one 
bright August day, 
just as it grew on the 
tree. The leaves are 
all spread abroad to 

,•,,-, v •, , -, -t Fig. 33.— Locust Branch 

catch the light and the Awake 

breezes. The thou- (Robinia.: 




Chwpters on Plant Life. 



sand little mouths are open, breathing in the air. 
In the evening, after it had grown dark, I went 
out and drew the same spray asleep (Fig. 34). 

There was just light 
enough for me to see, 
but not enough to 
wake the locust leaves. 
There they lay, hugged 
up to keep warm, their 
little mouths pressed 
close against each other. 
It may seem as won- 
derful to you as it did 
to me w r hen I first 
learned it, that all your 
lives the plant and 
trees around you had 
been going to sleep and 
cuddling up in this way, and you had never no- 
ticed or known it. When you think of it, it is 
not really so strange, for most of the time that 




Fig. 34.— Locust Branch 

Asleep. 

(Robinia.) 



Plants Caught Napping. 



99 



the leaves are asleep you are asleep too, and any 
light which under ordinary circumstances would 
show them to you, would keep them from going 
to sleep. In order to see these sleeping leaves 
you would have to 
take a lantern and go 
out after it was dark, 
and examine sprays 
which you had partic- 
ularly examined by 
day, to see just the dif- 
ference. 

The young leaves, 
like young babies, 
sleep more and cuddle 
up closer than the older 
ones do. I examined a 
great many plants, and 
found no other very 
common plant more in- 
teresting than the locust-tree, 




Fig. 35.— Sensitive Plant 

Awake. 

(Mimosa.) 

Some wistaria 



100 



Chapters on Plcmt Life. 



leaves, especially the young shoots, not only close 
up but turn over on their steins to get their rest. 

The most remarkable plant 
of all that I examined was a 
mimosa-tree, or sensitive plant, 
as it is often called (Fig. 35). 
This tree, however, grows full 
thirty feet high. In Virginia, 
where I made the drawing, you 
can sit and watch the branches 
against the evening sky; and as 
the twilight falls, the entire tree 
seems to be thinning out until 
it looks as if the season had 
gone backward and we were 
looking at the tree in its early 
Fig. 36. — Sensitive spring dress of delicate sprays 
Plant Asleep. ( Fig 36). It puts one in mind 
of Keats's beautiful line, when speaking of a live- 
ly girl going to sleep — 

" As if a rose should shut and be a bud again." 




Plants Caught Napping. 101 

It sometimes happens that plants which usually 
close their leaves when they sleep are very heav- 
ily shaded during the day. When this is the 
case they do not seem to be much affected by the 
darkness of the night, and do not change the po- 
sition of their leaves. It would seem as if they 
had been half asleep all day, and so had spoiled 
their night's rest. Darwin tells us of a plant 
which he says he watched carefully, and for two 
nights after having been violently shaken by the 
wind it did not cuddle down to sleep. It was 
probably too much excited to rest properly. 

This movement of sleep is so much affected by 
the presence or absence of water, which you re- 
member is the cause of all vegetable movement, 
that if the ground in which the plant grows is 
allowed to get very dry, or the air becomes ex- 
tremely parched around it, it makes no sleep 
movement at night. The " touch-me-not " and 
mallow are affected in this way by drought. 
Mr. Darwin tried to see how long a little plant 



102 Chapters on Plant Life. 

he had from Chili would live without water. 
He watched it for three weeks without giving it 
a drop to drink. Its leaves became dry and 
dusty, so that some of them would drop off from 
the stem every time he shook the pot. The earth 
about the roots became like the dust on a sum- 
mer road. The leaves that remained on the stem 
did not close in sleep at night. Finally, at the 
end of twenty-one days, he watered the earth and 
sponged off the dry and thirsty leaves. The next 
morning it seemed as fresh as ever, and when 
night came it nestled itself down comfortably to 
its rest. 

Some plants will go to sleep if they can make 
themselves comfortable; while if they are very 
much chilled by exposure to the cold night air 
they will not make a sleep movement. There is 
something almost human in all these freaks of 
wakefulness in the plant world. 

In some plants the leaves stand up to go to 
sleep, as horses do ; in others they droop down, 



Plants Caught Napping. 103 

or lie close to each other like little children. 
One kind of clover which has a yellow blossom 



l. 







p ( 1, Yellow Clover A, awake; B, asleep. 

' ( 2, Common White Clover. . ,A, awake; B, asleep. 
(Trifolium.) 

sleeps very curiously (Fig. 37) ; it has, as of course 
you know, three leaflets on each stalk. Each of 
the three twists itself around through the quar- 
ter of a circle, turning one of the side edges to the 



104 Chapters on Plant Life. 

sky. Two of the leaflets — the side ones — face 
towards the north, one a little to the east of north, 
the other a little to the west. The middle leaflet 
turns sometimes eastward, sometimes westward ; 
in doing so it twists itself over so as to protect 
its own upper surface and one of the other leaf- 
lets at the same time. The common white clover 
also sleeps very curiously. 

There is a very singular plant which bears 
three leaves on a stem, the middle one being 
large, and the other two long narrow leaflets 
which stand straight out from the stem just be- 
low the bottom of the large central leaf. They 
look like a pair of oars poised in the hands of a 
rower when he is waiting to dip them into the 
water. When this plant goes to sleep the small 
stem which holds the leaf stands straight up, and 
the leaf turns directly down flat against the stalk. 
The plant hardly looks like the same thing awake 
and asleep. 

Besides the sleep movement this plant has 



Plants Caught Napping, 



105 



some wonderful motions, which seem to be with- 
out any particular reason, and to come generally 
from change of temperature. Mr. Darwin put 
the stem of one of these leaves into some water 
cool enough to be pleasant to drink, and then 
changed the water for some about as warm as 
lukewarm tea. The leaflets began to move, and 
in a minute and a half had made a complete 
circle. In very young plants of this kind the 
leaflets jerk all the while, very much as a baby 
kicks its legs and moves its arms, without having 
any particular reason for doing it. 

When leaves get sleepy they do not sink stead- 
ily and quietly down. There is nobody to take 
them and lay them 
down to sleep when 
they feel drowsy, so 
they go off by them- 
selves in a slow sort 
of nodding motion. 
Fig. 38 shows the path 




5 p.m. 5.30 p.m. 6 p.m. 6.30 p.m. 

Fig. 38. — The Path of the Nod. 



106 Chapters on Plant Life. 

that one of these little sleepy heads moved over 
before it went off sound asleep. 

The cause of all these movements is, as we shall 
see when we study the movements of growing 
and climbing plants, the shifting of water from 
cell to cell, but the reason for them is the same 
which makes two little children sleeping side by 
side draw closer together when they feel chilly, 
and nestle down together in the bed. The 
warmth of their bodies then is not lost, but 
passes from one to the other. 



Liverworts. 107 



Chapter IX. 

LIVERWORTS. 

One beautiful September day I started . out, 
basket in hand, to hunt for some curious plants 
that I had been reading about, and which had in- 
terested me very much. I had often noticed, as 
you have probably done, curious flat leaves, with 
curled-up edges, growing on damp paving-stones 
or around a spring, clinging close to the stones or 
wet ground, and carpeting them with a mat of 
rich dark green. 

As soon as I began reading about the liver- 
worts I recognized my old friends at once, and 
was anxious to see them again now that I knew 
something about their ways. A friend who was 
interested in my studies promised to show me the 
way to a spot where they grew, and this Septem- 
ber day was set apart for the excursion. 



108 Chapters on Plant Life. 

After leaving the street cars we turned down 
a side path and entered a deep cut, and in anoth- 
er minute a great wall of uneven rock and earth 
stood in front of us, covered from top to bottom 
with the most exquisite green. Mosses clung 
close like a rich velvet mantle, ferns reared their 
delicate fronds, tiny weeds fresh from the continual 
sprinkling of a stream of water which trickled 
over the rock grew in all the little crannies, and 
close around a spring which had hollowed out a 
small basin for itself in a ledge of the solid rock 
grew the liverwort. 

Besides what I had seen before in the liver- 
worts I now found that the leaves were spotted all 
over with diamond-shaped markings of a darker 
green, each of which had a dot in the centre, and 
that they were covered underneath with a num- 
ber of white glassy hairs, which laid hold of the 
rock, and glued the leaves down so tightly that 
it was very hard to loosen them. 

There were three other kinds of outgrowths 



Liverworts. 109 

upon the leaves, which I want to show you when 
we have done examining the leaves themselves. 
Fig. 39, a, is a leaf which I brought home to draw 




b 

Fig. 39. — Leaf of Liverwort. 

a, pocket disks ; &, seed disks ; c, nest 

(Marchantia.) 

for you ; b is another from a place close by. Fig. 
40 is a piece of the same leaf magnified. You 
see the diamond-shaped spots plainly in this, with 
the little dot in the centre. Now I want to make 
you understand clearly the meaning of these spots 
and their central dot. 

Just imagine that this irregular piece of leaf is 
a large low house, only one story high, made up 
of quantities of little rooms placed side by side, 
and with no entries or passageways between them. 
The under side of the leaf is the floor of the house. 



110 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 

the top is the roof, and the diamond-shaped spots 
all over the top are the roofs of the separate 
rooms ; each spot is a single roof, and covers in 
one room. The dot in the centre is a wonderful 
little chimney that leads out of the room into the 




n 

Fig. 40.— Part of Leaf of Liverwort, Magnified. 

h, root hairs. 
(Marchantia.) 

open air, and keeps it fresh. These chimneys are 
for the same purpose as the lips we have been ex- 
amining in the corn-plant ; the rooms are the hol- 
lows of the mouths, but instead of two simple lips 
opening into a hollow the liverwort has this cu- 



Liverworts. 



Ill 



rious chimney -like opening and looks so little like 
a mouth that I did not want to make it harder to 
understand by calling it so. These rooms have 
no doors or windows ; they have only these chim- 
neys, for their inhabitants never want to come 
and go ; they only want light and air, and these 
they get through the chimneys. We have been 
looking at the liverwort rooms from above ; a 
good magnifying-glass will let you look right down 
the chimney's throat into the rooms, and see the lit- 
tle inhabitants. Now 
I want to take off the 
front of one of them as 
you take off the front 

of a baby-house to look FlG 41. _ Leaf of Liverwort 

in. Fig. 41 is a room 

cut in this way, though 

this is cut right down 

through the middle, so 

that the chimney is sliced in two, and you may 

see how it is built. 




^f 



cut through one room and 
Floor. 

r, roof ; c, chimney ; w, wall ; p, plants 
growing inside ; /, floor. 

(Marchantia.) 



112 Chapters on Plant Life. 

The floor,/, is very thick, made up of three or 
four rows of cells; the walls (w) are only one 
cell deep ; the roof (r) slopes up from every side 
towards the chimney (<?), which is in the mid- 
dle. The chimney, as you see, is built of rows 
of cells, one laid on top of another, just as the 
bricks are laid in our chimneys. The inhabitants 
are like the inhabitants of a greenhouse; they 
are queer little plants, something like the cactus 
plant so common in greenhouses or as a window 
plant. 

The liverwort is a plant that seems to be all 
leaves. There is no regular stem, but the leaves 
grow on and on, one out of another ; the roots (A) 
are the little glassy hairs that grow from the un- 
der part of the leaf. What takes the place of a 
flower — that is, the part that produces the seed- 
also grows out of the leaf. I hope you noticed 
in Fig. 39, 5, the odd little umbrella-shaped things 
that came out of one, and the blunt, clumsy scal- 
loped clubs out of the other, a. If not, you may 



Liverworts. 



113 



look back now and see them, for they are very 
curious little things. 

The first we will examine under the magnifier. 
Fig. 39, b, is like a little umbrella deeply scalloped 
about the edge. In Fig. 42 you may see it in two 




a c 

Fig. 42. — Seed Disk. 
a, 6, seed disks, two positions ; c, vegetable bottle. 
(Marchantia.) 

positions very much enlarged. No drawing can 
give you the least idea how beautiful this is under 
the microscope (Fig. 42, a) ; the delicate green 
spotted with a deeper tint of the same color and 
from beneath lovely irregular fringes, which look 
as if they were made of glistening spun glass. 



114 Chapters on Plant Life. 

When you turn it over (b) you see nestling be- 
tween the bright fringes a little round body like 
a pea in its pod ; this body comes after the seed. 
If I had looked for iny liverwort earlier I would 
not have seen this pea, but would have found 
something even more singular, which comes before 
it, as the flower comes before the fruit. We can- 
not talk about things without having some name 
to call them by, and as the names the botanists 
give these things are very long and hard and 
puzzling, we will name them for ourselves, and 
call these long scalloped umbrellas seed disks, for 
they grow the seed. 

After the seed disks have grown, down between 
the fringes a tiny bud sprouts, which, when it is 
complete, is an odd, pretty little vegetable bottle 
with a ball in the middle (Fig. 42, <?), reminding 
one of the water-bottles with ice frozen in them 
that we sometimes see at restaurants. When the 
bottles are full grown the neck peeps out from 
between the fringes, waiting for something. 



Liverworts. 



115 



Now we will have to go back, as they do in 
the story-books, and see what the bottles are 
stretching out their little necks for. On the other 
growths (Fig. 39, a) you see some queer little 
toadstools which grow underneath the leaf, and 
curve around upward till they stand straight 
up ; these usually grow on another plant near by 
the seed disk, and while one is growing the other 
is doing the same thing. 
Now look at one of 
these little toadstools 
(they are not really 
toadstools, but they 
look like them). This 
was cut with a sharp 
razor right down 
through the middle, as 
we did the tiny room 
of the leaf, and you are 
looking at it sidewise. 
You see (Fig. 43, a) that it is all full of little 




Fig, 43.— Whip-case. 

a, pocket disks ; b, egg-shaped body ; 
c, whips ; A, root hairs. 

(Marchantia.) 



116 Chapters on Plant Life. 

pockets, and that standing on end in each pocket 
is something like an egg. Fig. 43, b, is this egg 
enlarged still more. 

Each of these eggs is like an immense prison, 
with hundreds of cells built story on story. In 
each cell is an impatient little prisoner waiting to 
get out. You remember I told you the liver- 
worts always lived where there was plenty of 
water. The water is the fairy that finally lets 
the prisoners free. It trickles into the pockets 
and fills them, and the prison walls swell and 
crack and free the captives. Funny-looking little 
things they are, too, when they get out! Put 
them in a little w r ater on a piece of glass and look 
at them through your microscope, and you will 
see hundreds of little blunt-handled whips, each 
with a couple of lashes (Fig. 43, <?), which have 
the singular power of whipping around without 
any help. 

By some unknown means beyond our guessing 
these diligent little whips, sooner or later in their 



Liverworts, 117 

active trips through the water, find the open 
mouths of the bottles in the seed disk, and whip 
themselves in. This was what the bottle was 
waiting for; and the ball in the bottle, and the 
whip which has found its way into it, enter on a 
very close partnership,, Just such a partnership 
as this must be made for the formation of every 
seed. 

In ordinary plants the seed formed in this way 
falls into the ground and makes a new plant, but 
the liverworts do not. Without leaving its home 
between the glassy fringes the seed grows till it 
makes the round pea which we saw in Fig. 42, b ; 
this is made up of a quantity of a kind of seed 
called spores, and whole bundles of long elastic 
threads, which, when they are ripe, snap and flirt 
the seed everywhere about, so that one single 
seed produces thousands of spores, which sow 
themselves broadcast. 

Besides these curious arrangements for sowing 
themselves, there is yet another. The liverworts, 



118 Chapters on Plant Life. 

when they find themselves in very comfortable 
quarters, get lazy; they grow and spread and 
take their ease, and don't seem to care whether 
any other liverworts come after them when they 
die or not ; no little disks grow on them to make 
seed and sow themselves ; but whether these disks 



MfcM. 







Fig. 44.— Cupule, or Nest 
{Marchantia.) 



grow or not, they almost always have on their 
leaves the little nests marked c on Fig. 39. 

Now let us put one of these under the micro- 
scope and look at it. If it was hard to give any 
idea of the seed disk by means of a mere picture, 
it is impossible here. The nests are the most 



Liverworts, 119 

exquisite things imaginable: the shape you see 
in Fig. 44, but they look as if they were carved 
out of a pale emerald, the fringed points shining 
and glistening, and down in the bottom of the 
nest lies a treasure- trove of carved gems of a 
deeper green. Over it all one would imagine 
diamond dust had been sprinkled, as it glitters 
and sparkles in the light. These little gems are 
spores which are washed out of the nest, and 
taking root, make new plants to bear new nests 
as beautiful as themselves. 

Upon pots in most greenhouses you will find 
quantities of another kind of liverwort, not nearly 
so beautiful as the one I have been describing. 
Instead of the nests there are little crescent- 
shaped pockets which hold the spores. Another 
kind has a little upright flask which holds them. 
But whatever shape they may be, and whether 
the seed-making disks are on the leaves or not, 
some kind of cup or pocket for the spores is 
always formed. 



120 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 



Chapter X. 

MOSSES. 

You must have noticed, whether you live in 
the city or the country, how quickly a velvety 
coat of moss forms wherever it can get a chance. 
It needs plenty of shade and moisture, and where 
it finds these things it grows quickly: roofs and 
pavements, water-butts and troughs, tree-trunks 
and rocks, soon cover themselves with a rich 
plush garment of green or brown when left un- 
disturbed, if they are in damp and shady places. 

Moss was the world's first compass. Before 
people had ventured out into the great waters 
the compass was only needed to guide men 
through the forests on dark and cloudy days. 
By looking at the trees the wild hunter could 
tell where the north was, because the mosses 



Mosses. 121 

grow on that side, nestling in the shade, where 
the dew and the rain lie longest. 

Perhaps you have never really examined moss. 
Looking at it carelessly, you have naturally 
thought that there were only a few kinds, and 
these kinds very much alike. Now if you are 
anywhere that you can study them, take your 
pocket- microscope, and you will find that you 
are very much mistaken. There are in reality 
a great many kinds of mosses, differing from each 
other almost as much as the flowers in your gar- 
den do. The moss-plant is so tiny that you must 
look through your microscope to see how really 
beautiful it is; but a careful examination with- 
out the help of the glass will probably show you 
much that you have never noticed before. 

Before we go any further, let me tell you, if 
you have not one of the child's microscopes with 
all the little tools to dissect flowers and see in- 
sects with, how to make yourself some dissecting 
needles. Make with a penknife several little 



122 , Chapters on Plant Life. 

bits of wood, something like a piece of a wooden 
pen-handle ; into one end of each push the head 
of a No. 8 sewing needle. You can easily do this, 
if the little handles are made of pine or cedar, 
either by holding the needle with a pair of com- 
mon pliers, or by pushing carefully against some 
wood, so as not to break the point. 

When you are ready to dissect your leaf or 
flower, lay it on a small piece of glass. If the 
flower is light, put a piece of black stuff under 
the glass; if it is dark, put some white paper 
under it, to help you see it easily. Then take 
one of your needles in one hand and one in the 
other, and pull the object, little by little, to 
pieces. This is called " teasing out " the leaf. 
In this way you will find out a great many 
things about it which you would never find by 
merely pulling it to pieces with your fingers. 
If you have a microscope or magnifying - glass, 
put each piece under it and examine it closely. 
It is very interesting work, and when you find 



Jfosses. 



123 



one curious thing after another, you will never 
think of calling it tiresome. I have spent two 
steady hours teasing out a tiny water-plant to 
find one particular kind of bud, but I found it at 
last, and then all the work seemed easy enough. 

While I was writing this I 
thought I would see if I could 
not find some moss in the 
garden, and in about five 
minutes I have gathered five 
different kinds of moss. One 
little patch that is lying be- 
fore me I will tell you about, 
so that you may look for 
some like it; it is a very 
common kind. On a square 
inch of earth I found hun- 
dreds of little green clumps 
(Fig. 45). From among 

these spring up some slender Fia - 45 - 

, Moss Spoke-cases. 

red stems, from half an inch (Funaria.) 




124 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



to an inch in height. Each of these stems bears 
a curved pod, some with caps and some without. 
In Fig. 45 the right-hand one, JB } has its cap 

on, while A has lost 
its cover. The caps 
fit on so easily that I 
can lift them off with a 
touch. These pods are 
the little vases that 
hold the moss spores, 
from which new moss- 
plants will grow. 
When they are ripe, 
and ready to be sowed, 
the vase will attend to 
the business, and scat- 
ter them far and wide. 
The caps come off, and 
the tiny seed in the 

Fig. 46.-Young Moss Plant. vase are blown out by 
A, spore; r, root; Z, leaf; ,, . , 1 n 

b, young plant. the wind or washed 




Mosses. 125 

out by the rain. Other mosses have different 
shaped vases, some of them very beautiful. 

A new moss -plant begins from one of the 
spores which lies on the ground. The dampness 
makes the spore begin to swell. One little bud 
pushes itself out at one end, and another at the 
other (Fig. 46, A). A is the spore, I the leaf- 
bud, r the root-bud. At first these buds seem 
just alike, but very soon we begin to see a differ- 
ence : one bud lies on the ground, and gets brown 
and ugly, r; the other, ?, grows up into the air 
and becomes green, and sends out little fairy-like 
stems and leaves. But both grow and spread, 
the leaf-bud to make the velvet sheet of moss, 
the root-bud to make a tangle which pushes its 
way into the ground below. Both the root-bud 
and leaf-bud are necessary to the life of the plant 
and to each other. The root drinks in the water 
and food from the earth ; the leaf breathes in the 
air and sunshine. The happy little bud in the 
air is not too proud and selfish to help its ugly 




B 





Fig. 47. — Whip-case. 
d, whips escaping ; B, 

whips coiled ; C, 

whips free. 
(Funaria.) 



Chapters on Plant Life. 

little brother who is digging 
down into the earth. They work 
lovingly together, helping each 
other and all the family of which 
they are members. In Fig. 46, 
B, you see the beginning of a 
plant; the buds grow and branch, 
and set up cross partitions, so that 
what was at first one long nar- 
row room or cell is now many 
such rooms placed end to end. 

After the plant has grown, 
sometimes till it has covered sev- 
eral square inches of ground, it 
begins to get ready to grow the 
parts that correspond to a flower. 
Little buds curled up close in a 
bunch of leaves begin to grow 
on the ends of the branches. In 
the middle of each of these 
bunches grows a curious little 






Mosses. 



127 



sack or bottle. In Fig. 47, A, is one 
taken out of the middle of a little 
bunch of leaves. This is a sort of 
whip-case with quantities of little 
double-lashed whips, d, escaping. B 
is one of the whips coiled in its 
little pocket, and 6' is another, free; 
While this whip- case has been 
growing, on the same plant, or an- 
other near by, another bud is form- 
ing in a bunch of leaves (Fig. 48). 
This bud looks like a bottle with 
a small body and a long curved 
neck. In the midst of the body is 
a round object: this is the ovule, 
the whips are the pollen, and when 
a partnership is formed between the 
two, we have the beginning of a 
true seed. This is all so much 
like the liverworts that I have not 
gone into it very particularly. If 



Fig. 48.— Ovule- 
case. 
o, ovule. 
{Funaria.) 



128 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



you have forgotten look back at the last chapter. 

The whips, when they get out of the pockets, go 

lashing around in the water near the moss till 

they find the mouth of 
the bottle. They go in 
there, and work their 
way down to the 
ovule. Here the two 
seem to melt into one, 
and the seed is begun. 
If there is no water, 
and the partnership 
is not formed, the 
moss -plant drops its 
spores, and new plants 
are formed from them ; 
but it seems better to 
have some seed plants 
every now and then : 

the moss-bed seems strengthened by them. 

The moss-plant, begun in either way, grows and 




Fig. 49. — Sphagnum Enlarged. 



Mosses. 



129 



spreads, creeping over earth or bark or rock, till 
it makes a beautiful velvet bed ; it sends up its 
pods and scatters its spores ; new plants spring up, 
and so it goes on, and has 
gone on for thousands 
and thousands of years. 

There is a very com- 
mon kind of moss that 
grows in poor, miserable 
ground, which has some 
wonderful things about 
it. Fig. 49 gives a pict- 
ure of the plant, magni- 
fied ; in Fig. 50 you may 
see the beautiful whip- 
case of this moss. 

I have tried to make 
the curious way in which 
leaves are built up of 

,! , . , Fig. 50.— Whip-case. 

cells clear to you by _ _ a L . 

J J a, whips and whip magnified. 

comparing them to (Sphagnum.) 




130 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



houses with rooms built story above story and 
side by side. This moss I am telling you about 
is like a very large, rambling, one -storied house. 
It is not a private house, though, for there are 

ever so many rooms 

with round doors that 

open out, and in these 

rooms certain funny 

little water- insects 

f^Mf take refuge j ust as cool- 

^ ly as if they had paid 

their rent and carried 

the door-key in their 

side pockets. Fig. 51 

gives a piece of one of 

these leaves very much 

enlarged : r, r, r, are the 

rooms to let, and I, I, I, 

the doors into them. 

Mosses do not seem to be of much value ; we 

are apt to think of them as poor, useless little 




Fig. 51. — Sphagnum-leap 

Magnified. 

r, r, r, rooms ; Z, ?, Z, doors. 



' 



Mosses. 131 

things of very little account, especially the dry 
sphagnum moss. But this is not really the case. 
Just as the wood of the trees that died thousands 
of years ago has made our coal, so the sphagnum 
moss of those old times has made the peat bogs 
of Ireland. You must have heard or read how 
the poor Irish people, who cannot afford to burn 
coal or wood, make their rooms warm and cook 
their meals by peat which they dig from the 
bogs. This peat is the sphagnum moss, packed 
layer upon layer, as year after year a new crop 
grew on top of the old one. 



132 Chapters on Plant Life. 



Chapter XI. 
FERNS. 

Out in the pleasant woods, where the shade is 
so thick that the sun cannot manage to get through 
the leaves to dry up the moisture, the ferns love 
to grow ; they delight in mossy dells, and dripping 
rocks, and gently rippling streams, and about such 
places you will be most likely to find them large 
and fine. 

Did you ever notice the little fern leaf as it 
lifts its head above the grass? It comes up, all 
curled up, hugging itself close to keep warm, 
it would seem. Pretty soon the coil begins to 
loosen, and the stem to straighten itself out, and 
the little leaves to unfold and stretch themselves 
in the sweet air and sunshine (Fig. 52). 

Every child and very nearly every grown per- 



Ferns. 



133 



son who roams the woods for wild flowers learns 
to love ferns : their fresh, bright, green, and deli- 
cate leaves make 
up for the want 
of blossoms. Some 
of them droop and 
fade very quickly 
in water, but oth- 
ers stay fresh for 
a long time, and 
make a beautiful 
bouquet of them- 
selves, or with 
bright autumn 
leaves. Nothing 
else that grows 
is so beautiful 
and natural w T hen 
pressed as fern 

leaves ; perhaps that is why every one is tempted 
to gather them. 




Fig. 52.— Young Fern. 



134 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



Ferns, like the liverworts and mosses, do not 
bear flowers. Let us take any common fern and 
examine it. On the back of the leaf, if it is late 
enough in the season, you will 
find some patches which look 
like rust. On some leaves 
these splotches are spotted reg- 
ularly over the leaf, or along 
lines (Fig. 53); on others they 
form a lace -like pattern; on 
others again they are dotted 
around the edge, as in the 
maiden-hair fern. When you 
look closely at this rust it ap- 
pears like a sort of powder, but 
the minute you put it under a 
magnifying-glass you see how 
curious it is. Every grain of 
the dust is a little roundish case 
full of brown specks. The cases are sacs to hold 
the spores (Fig. 54, A, B). These spores, you re- 




Fig. 53. — Leaf with 
Spore- Cases on Back, 



Ferns, 



135 



member, are a kind of seed, each one capable of 
producing a new plant. Nearly surrounding the 
sac is what looks like a 
necklace of clear beads : 
these beads are really a 
row of thick small cells 
that draw together as 
the whole case dries, 
and finally split open 
the case and let the 
spores free (Fig. 54, B). 
Different ferns have 
various kinds of spore 
cases; almost all of 
them grow in some sort of a pocket. Some fern 
leaves have shallow pockets on each side of the 
middle vein, or stem, that runs through the leaf; 
others have their edges doubled over to form the 
pockets. The maiden-hair fern has, as you know, 
beautiful polished black stems and shield-shaped 
leaves. In each scallop at the top of the leaf is 




Fig. 54. 

A, spore-case; B, case split open, 
letting spores escape; &, &, spores. 



136 Chapters on Plant Life. 

a pocket full of spore-cases, which looks, to your 
naked eye, like an ornamental dot to improve the 
appearance of the leaf. 

If you happen to have some of the creeping 
Hartford fern, which is used so much for decora- 
tion, examine it, and you will see that it has all 
along the stem large leaves with no spots on 
the back, but at the end of each branch is a 
number of small and slender leaves; turn these 
over, and you will find the whole leaf covered 
with the rusty powder. Such ferns as these are 
sometimes called incorrectly flowering ferns. Cor- 
rectly speaking, they have two kinds of leaves — 
one which bears and one which does not bear 
spores. The flowering plants belong to a higher 
class of vegetable life. 

The fern family are not very aristocratic mem- 
bers of society in the vegetable world ; they are 
classed with mosses and liverworts and other 
flowerless plants. But in their own class they 
stand highest ; they are the first, as we go from 



Ferns. 137 

the lower to the higher, that have real roots, roots 
with a root-cap, and the curious air-vessels run- 
ning through them, which you see in Fig. 55. 
Some of these air-vessels are wonderfully beauti- 
ful. Did you never notice, when you broke a 
tough, green, juicy stem of a plant, how some 
threads seemed to break hardest^ and hung out 
of the broken end of the stem as if they had been 
stretched longer tfian the rest of it. These strings 
are the air-vessels : I would like to show you how 
beautiful they are when we look at them through 
a microscope. These fibres help to strengthen 
the plant, as your muscles do your body, and 
they are at the same time air-passages ; they are 
both muscles and lungs in one. Every leaf and 
stem and root in all the plants that have flowers 
or fruit, in all the forest -trees — in fact, in every 
plant higher (not in size, but in kind) than the 
mosses — are full of these wonderful and beautiful 
air-vessels. 

Since I cannot show you the vessels themselves, 



138 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



I will do the best I can, and show the likeness of 
a bundle of them taken out of a fern leaf some 
time ago and put under the microscope (Fig. 55). 
Is not it wonderful that so much beauty should 




Fig. 55.— Air-vessels of Fern. 



be hidden away in every leaf and stem and blade 
of grass where no one ever suspected it, until of 
late years men have found it % 

Now let us take one of the tiny fern spores and 
drop it on the damp earth and see what happens. 



Ferns, 



139 






The spore swells with soaking up the water, one 
side cracks open, 
and after a while 
a little bit of 
a white head, 
something like 
theendofawhite 
worm, pushes it- 
self out. As this 
grows it sets up 
partition walls, 
making new cells 
on every side, till 
finally we have 
a little thin, flat, 
pale green leaf ly- 
ing close against 
the ground (Fig. 
56). It holds to 

the ground, and A, Flat first-leaf; a a, ovule-cases ; 6 6, whip- 
-. . . . cases; c, whips coiled up; B, whip -cases 

SUCKS ItS moist- and ovule-cases enlarged. 




-aa 



Fig. 56. — Leaf of Fern. 



140 Chapters on Plant Life. 

ure by thread-like root hairs growing from the 
lower side. On the upper side, after a while, little 
knobs begin to show, dotting the leaf irregularly. 
Under the magnifying-glass these dots are seen 
to be of two kinds. One kind has within it a 
round body (Fig. 56, A, #), the ovule; the other 
a number of little whip-cases, such as the mosses 
and liverworts have (Fig. 56, A, b). This leaf 
with these tiny knobs is what the fern has in 
place of flowers. The ovule is like those inside 
the moss and liverwort bottles; the whip-cases 
are also like the whip-cases in the mosses and 
liverworts. 

When the ovule is ripe, and the whips com- 
pletely grown, the knob opens ; the opening above 
the ovule (Fig. 56, B, a) is filled with mucilage, 
which catches any of the unwary little whips 
lashing about in (Fig. 56, J5, c) the water where 
the leaf is growing. A partnership is formed be- 
tween the whip and an ovule, and together they 
grow into a true seed. This seed then acts like 



Ferns. 141 

any other seed, sprouts, sends out leaves and roots, 
and we have a fern plant. In ordinary plants the 
roots and stems and leaves grow first, and then 
comes the flower which bears the seed. In the 
mosses and ferns the part that stands in the place 
of a flower grows all by itself and produces its 
seed ; this then grows into a plant, bears spores, 
which are rather like tiny slips or buds from the 
plant than like seed. These in their turn produce 
the little " first leaf," and so it goes on, two dis- 
tinct and separate growths being necessary to 
fill out the whole life of every single plant of 
the fern family. 



142 Chapters on Plant Life. 



Chapter XII. 
FLOWERS IN FANCY DRESS. 

I eemembeh as well as though it were yester- 
day how, years and years ago, when I was a very 
little girl, I very often roamed through the beau- 
tiful woods of Southern Ohio, hunting for a cer- 
tain wild-flower. 

The object of my search was a flower not often 
found, which we children called the Indian moc- 
casin. It did look like a moccasin, indeed, with 
its round blunt toe and yellow, leathery, shoe- 
shaped pouch* I wonder if any prospector ever 
looked for signs of gold with more intense excite- 
ment than I felt when searching for my little gold- 
en shoe? Everywhere I turned, in my breathless 
haste, yellow moccasins seemed dancing before 
my eyes, and I hardly knew, till my eager hands 



Flowers in Fancy Dress. 



143 



had grasped the stem, whether it was a real 
flower I had found or not. I hardly think I 
could have valued it 
more if I had known 
what I have since learn- 
ed about the wonderful 
ways of the orchids, to 
which family my moc- 
casin belonged. 

You may never have 
found this particular 
plant in your rambles, 
and yet may know some 
other of the orchid tribe 
which grows wild in 
our woods. The com- 
mon names are so differ- 
ent in different places that it is hard to tell you 
how to know them when you see them. The 
putty-root, and the lady's-slipper something like 
that in Fig. 57, are some of them. The flower 




Fig. 57. — Lady's-slipper. 

(Cypripedium.) 



144 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



given in Fig. 57 is a cultivated plant, not exactly 
like any wild one, but a good deal like them. 





Not the touch-me- 
not, a plant whose 
seed-pods snap and 
curl up if you touch 
them, and which is 
sometimes called 
lady's- slipper. 

The orchids are 
an eccentric family. 
There is scarcely 
one of them which 
is not " queer " in some way or other. They seem 



Fig. 58. — Butterfly Orchid. 
(Oncidium.) 



Flowers in Fancy Dress. 



145 



always to be trying to look 
or to act like something 
besides flowers. They imi- 
tate all sorts of things 
besides little Indian shoes. 
I wish I could take you ^ 
into an orchid greenhouse 
and let you look around. 
You would think you had 
been invited to a fancy- 
dress party of the flowers. 
There is one that looks 
for all the world like a 
swan, with its long curved 
neck; there is a beautiful 
butterfly with spotted gold- 
en wings (Fig. 5S). Fig. 
59 looks like a stalk up 
which some queer little 
ant -like creatures seem 

Bees and spi- 
10 




climbing, 



Fig. 59. — Clmbesg Orchid. 

(CaLzria.) 



146 Chapters on Plant Life. 

ders, done in brown and yellow, or perhaps more 
gorgeous colors, are all around. Here is a long 
spike of waxen flowers, and in the cup of each 
nestles a pure white dove with outspreading 
wings. The Spaniards have given it a name 
which means the flower of the Holy Ghost, from 
its resemblance to a dove. 

These strange likenesses to other things are, 
however, the least wonderful thing about orchids. 
They differ from ordinary plants in many singu- 
lar ways. Many of them, instead of growing in 
the ground, and drawing from it their food and 
drink, grow in the air, and take nourishment from 
it by means of their naked dangling roots. It 
seems sometimes as if living as they do, high up 
on the bark of trees, had put the notion into their 
heads of trying to look like birds and butterflies 
and bees. 

The air manages to supply them with food, but 
they have to depend upon getting drink in some 
other way. Plants are a good deal like people 



Flowers in Fancy Dress. 



147 



in that respect; they can manage to get along 
somehow with very little food, but they soon die 
of thirst if deprived of water. 

In a wild state the air-plants grow on the bark 
of trees or on other substances, but they send 
their little roots into 
the moist bark or moss 
to get water. They do 
not feed on the juices 
of the trees, as parasites 
like the fungi and lich- 
ens and mistletoe do; 
they only want a stand- 
ing-place, something to 
push against as they 
grow, and plenty of 
water. In the green- 
house they are usually 
planted in pots filled 
with bits of stone and damp moss, or they grow 
attached to the parent plant, as you may see in 




Fig. 60. — Young Plant grow- 
ing on Flower Stem. 

(Dendrobium.) 



148 Chapters on Plant Life. 

Fig. 60, and send their roots out into the air for 
food. A few of them — the Indian moccasin, for 
instance — grow like common plants in the ground. 

It would almost seem as if the orchids had an 
eye to business in their imitation of insects. At 
any rate, there seems to be a very good under- 
standing between them, and constant business re- 
lations are kept up. The flowers always have a 
little pouch somewhere about them in which they 
keep a stock of honey on hand. Their beautiful 
colors and delicious smell attract, by day and 
night, bees, butterflies, and moths. In return for 
the "treat" which the flowers give, the insects 
render a valuable service to the plants. 

I must remind you of something we have looked 
into before, and that is that every perfect seed is 
the result of a partnership entered into by the 
pollen grains or " whips" and the ovules of a plant. 
The pollen is the yellow dust which it is so easy 
to see on lilies and some other flowers; it is to 
flowering plants what the whips are in mosses 






Flowers in Forney Dress. 149 

and ferns. The ovules are little round bodies 
lying in the swollen part of a flower where it 
joins the stem. Above the ovules, and connected 
with them, is the pistil, sometimes standing up in 
the midst of the stamens which make the centre 
of most flowers, sometimes it is only a sticky lit- 
tle pad, as it is in the orchids. Some plants get 
along perfectly well if this partnership is entirely 
a family affair, and the pollen of a flower falls on 
its own pistil, and makes a union with its own 
ovules ; but this is not always the case. Certain 
plants require that the pollen shall be from anoth- 
er plant if the seed is to be sound and healthy. 
Orchids require this cross -fertilization, as it is 
called, and without the help of insects it could 
not be effected. 

Bees and other flying visitors, it is found, al- 
ways go in a single excursion from one flower 
of a kind to another of the same kind. They do 
not mix their drinks. This instinct not only 
serves to keep the honey stored by the bees pure, 



150 Chapters on Plant Life. 

but it enables the insects to carry the pollen just 
where it will be useful. The pollen of a morning- 
glory would die if put on the rose pistil. It must 
be placed on a flower of the same family as the 
one it came from, or one very nearly related to it, 
or it will do no good. 

Now look at Fig. 60 and you will see that the 
flowers have a hollow tube in the centre, with a 
projecting lower lip. This tube is a single leaf or 
petal curled over to make a tunnel, and through 
this tunnel is the only path to the honey pouch. 
When a butterfly feels like taking a drink, and 
one of these orchids is near, he lights on the lower 
lip (Z) of the tube, and pushing his long proboscis, 
or trunk, through it into the pouch, sucks up the 
honey. Now look at Fig. 61, A. This is a picture 
of the tube with its near wall cut away, so that 
you can see the inside arrangement. As he works 
his proboscis down into the honey pouch, JV, it is 
pressed against r, and touches a spring there; the 
little cap at r snaps open, and leaves a sticky ball 




-z 



Fig. 61. — Honey Pouch and Pollen Pods. 
A y Orchis mascula; B, Deadrobium cut in two. 



Flowers in Fancy Dress. 153 

resting on the proboscis. As the butterfly goes 
on sucking, this ball dries as if it were glued to 
his trunk. When he draws his head out, this pro- 
boscis is ornamented with one or two little tufts 
which look like the trees in a child's toy village, 
as you will see in the illustration (Fig. 61, C). 

Now look at the fragment of a' flower in the 
part marked A of the same illustration. Suppose 
the pollen tuft to stay just where it is when the 
butterfly comes out of the flower. You can see by 
looking at the figure that it would strike r in the 
next flower it entered, and that would do no 
good : s is the place it should strike ; s is the 
pistil. Now take an orchid flower, if you can get 
one ; if not, look at Fig. 62, A, and see what will 
happen. I push into it a sharpened lead-pencil, 
and it comes out with the pollen tuft standing up 
as it does on the butterfly's trunk. Watch it a 
minute. As it dries, the stem of the tuft bends 
down towards the point of the pencil. Now push 
it into another flower. Wait a little while — a 



154 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



minute perhaps — and take the pencil out. You 
will see that the pollen has been pulled out of its 
little case. If you tear open the flower, you will 
find the pollen sticking so tight on the pistil, s, 
that you can scarcely brush it off. In this upper 
flower the drawing is from Mr. Darwin's book, 
but the lower one is one of the flowers in Fig. 60 




Fig. 62. — Pencil and Needle, with Pollen. 



which I picked off the plant after drawing it, and 
tried with a pencil myself, r in the lower draw- 
ing looks like a little purple velvet pouch swung 
lightly on its stalk. The pencil came out, leaving 
the little bag empty, and the pollen glued fast to 



Flowers in Fancy Dress. 



155 



its side. But they were not glued so fast that 
the} 7 were not pulled off by the next flower that 
the pencil entered. 

Some of the orchids have two pistils, one on 
each side. In these, if you push into the tube a 
bristle or needle, the two pollen cases come out as 
in Fig. 62, B; as they dry, they spread apart, and 




Fig. 63.— Butterfly's Pro- 
boscis, with Pollen. 

a a, double pollen-pods, glued on. 



bend forward so that both pistils are struck at 
once as it is pushed into the next blossom. The 
contrivances by which each orchid receives on 
just the right spot exactly the right pollen are 



156 Chapters on Plant Life. 

perfectly marvellous. I have only told you a 
very few of the simplest facts in regard to the 
help the insects give to the flowers. Many a poor 
butterfly goes through life having its proboscis 
loaded down with the glued-on pollen cases (Fig. 
63, a a). It is one of those business arrangements 
which does not work equally well for both parties. 
All this is beautiful for the flowers, but it seems 
rather hard on the butterflies. 



"JPicciola" 157 



Chapter XIII. 
"PICCIOLA." 

Theee is a beautiful little French story which 
has been translated into English and called 
" Picciola," the Italian for little flower. It is the 
story of a French nobleman who was thrown into 
prison on an unjust charge of plotting against 
the government of his country. He was a man 
of talent and education, as well as of wealth and 
position. Somehow, with all his life had given 
him, it had never taught him to look with open 
eyes at nature, or to see beyond nature a God 
who had created it. 

He was restless and impatient in his close cell 
and the little strip of court-yard where he paced 
up and down, and up and down, in his misery, 
longing to be free. One day he saw between 



158 Chapters on Plant Life. 

the heavy paving - stones of the yard the earth 
raised up into a tiny mound. His heart bound- 
ed at the thought that some of his friends were 
digging up from below to reach him and give 
him his liberty again. 

But when he came to examine the spot closely 
he found it was only a little plant pushing the 
earth before it in its effort to reach the light and 
the air. With the bitter sense of disappointment 
which this discovery brought, he was about to 
crush the little intruder with his foot, and then 
a feeling of compassion stopped him, and its life 
was spared. 

The plant grew and throve in its prison, and 
the Count de Charney became every day fonder 
of his fellow-prisoner ; he spent hours, which had 
before been empty, watching it as it grew and 
developed, until it became the absorbing interest 
of his life. As he watched it day by day, and 
saw the contrivances by which it managed to live 
and grow, he was compelled to believe that there 



" Piceiola" 159 

must be, somewhere, a great and wonderful power 
that could design and make so marvellous a thing. 
The little flower was like a little child taking 
him by the hand, and leading him away from his 
dark, bitter, unbelieving thoughts into the light 
of God's love. 

I want to take some common flower, some- 
thing you have seen a hundred times every sum- 
mer of your lives, and show you a few of the 
marvellous contrivances that make it able to live 
and grow and bear blossoms and fruit. If you 
will study them closely for a while, it will not 
seem so strange then that the Count de Charney, 
who had lived so many years without learning 
anything of the wonders of nature, should have 
had them opened for him by one little flower 
that he had carefully watched and studied. 

Most plants higher than the ferns are alike in 
having roots, stems, and leaves, and some sort of 
flower and seed-vessel. But the parts look so 
very different in different plants that it is some- 



160 Chapters on Plant Life, 

times a little hard to tell which is which. In 
some the roots grow in the air, and in others the 
stems grow underground. It is only by studying 
what the parts do that it is possible to be sure 
what they are. The most important part of every 
living thing is its stomach, because everything 
that lives must eat and drink, or die. There are 
some very curious plants which have regular 
stomachs into which their food goes, just as it 
does in an animal, and is digested, but these are 
not very common. After a while we will come 
to these strange plants, which I have called veg- 
etable pitchers and queer traps. Ordinary plants 
have roots to supply them with food and water 
in the place of a stomach. 

Let us study the roots of some plant. Any or- 
dinary plant will do. If you can do so, get a hya- 
cinth glass and bulb. The bulb is the root, and 
looks very much like an onion ; the glass is a vase 
made for the purpose of growing hyacinths in 
water. It slopes in from the bottom upward. 



"Picciola" 161 

and then bulges out suddenly. The bulb rests 
in this bulging part, and has water below it and 
around its lower part. The glass being clear, you 
can see the roots grow as plainly as you can see 
a leaf or a flower-bud unfold. Perhaps you have 
no hyacinth glass, and cannot get one ; then try 
to make one for yourself out of a- small glass jar. 
There will certainly be a pickle bottle or a pre- 
serve jar about the house which will answer per- 
fectly well. All you want is to have the bulb 
rest half in and half out of the water, with room 
below for the roots to spread through the water. 
Be careful to keep the water up to the right mark 
by adding a little every day as the plant soaks 
it up. 

Or you may take a dozen grains of seed corn, 
soak them overnight, and then plant them an 
inch deep in a box, having about six inches or 
more depth of good earth. In about three days 
the blade will come above ground. Put your 

hand or a trowel down beside one of the plants, 

11 



162 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



and scoop it gently up. Be sure you make your 
hand or trowel go away down below where the 
seed was planted, so as not to bruise the tender 

growth. Shake 
and blow the dust 
away, and you 
will see several 
little white thread- 
like roots coming 
from the grain. If 
you take up in 
this way all the 
young plants, one 
or two every day, 
you will see how 
they sprout and 
grow. 

If you have a 
Fig. 64.— Corn and Magnified Root. . -, 

,., „ * , , L , microscope and a 

(1) Corn four days planted; r, r, r, roots; x 

Z, leaf; a, grain of corn. (2) Koot magni- sharp knife, Care- 
fied ; c, root cap ; g, growing point. 

(Zeamais.) fully split the end 




" Picciola" 163 

of one of these roots and look at it. If you Lave 
not, you will have to trust me so far as to take this 
drawing as correct (Fig. 64). All these tiny roots 
have a cap over their growing end, so that when 
they have to push their way among the hard 
earth and stones, the growing part will not get 
bruised. These roots take in all- the water and 
the food which the earth supplies to the plant. 

The hyacinth can grow in water alone, because 
it has been a provident little body, and has stored 
away enough food in the little round carpet-bag 
of a bulb to supply the plant for the few weeks 
of its life. It only asks for the water it needs to 
keep it alive and growing. When the thirsty 
little roots have sucked up water enough, the 
bulb begins to grow in the other direction. If 
you look, you will see a solid lump of pale green 
come up from the top like the horns of a calf, or 
a baby's tooth. This is the young plant coming 
up out of its dark cradle into the light and air 
and sunshine. The delicate growing end of the 



164 Chapters on Plant Life. 

plant, which will after a while bear its beautiful 
spike of bells, is very tenderly wrapped up in the 
leaves. After it gets through the tough skin of 
the bulb, the plant grows straight up. It stretches 
itself after its long sleep in the sweet air and 
light, the leaves lengthen and broaden and open 
out, and the stem w r ith its little knobby buds 
comes up in the midst. These will soon grow 
and unfold into beauty and fragrance, now you 
will be rewarded for all your long waiting, if 
watching the wonderful growth day by day has 
not carried its own reward with it. 

Many plants are grown from roots or bulbs, 
but a greater majority by far come from seed. 
Tulips and lilies, onions and potatoes, are all in- 
stances of plants grown from new roots which 
sprout out from the old ones. The root is in 
every case the beginning, the seed the ending, of 
the life of a plant. 

Take two of the commonest of our window and 
garden plants — the geranium and the heart's- 



" Picciola." 



165 



ease. Let us take the geranium first. On the 
cluster of bloom we will probably find flowers 
partly withered, flowers full-blown, and buds 




Fig. 65.— Gekanium Pistil. 

(1) p y lily pistil ; 6, &, pollen grains ; c, where cut was made across. 

(2) c, the cut piece showing ovules ; o, ovule. 

(Pelargonium.) 

nearly ready to open. Look at a full-blown 
flower. You will see with your naked eye some- 
thing standing up in the middle which looks like 



166 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



a tiny pink lily; around it are little rounded 
white spikes. If you carefully strip off the green 
cap outside, and then the colored petals, you will 
find a lily like the one in the figure (Fig. 65) ; 

this is called the pistil. 
Now open one of the 
nearly blown buds; you 
will find the lily pistil 
still closed, and on two of 
the spikes around it two 
double - barrelled rosy 
pods. "When the pods, or 
stamens, are nearly ripe, 
they look for all the world 
like a pink gum -drop 
made in the shape of a 

(1) a } stamen with pods burst -^ , ,-, T * ., 

open; 6, », poiien grains. (2) .French roll. If they are 

6, 6, 6, pollen grain much en- • ,i i i _ A 

larged npe they look as you see 

(Pelargonium.) in Fig. 66. 

To make a perfect seed the pollen and ovule 
have to enter into partnership. The stamen 




Fig. 66.— Geranium Stamen 
and Pollen Grains. 



"Picciola" 167 

sends out thousands of clear orange pollen grains 
(Fig. 66, b), and when these fall on the top of 
the lily or pistil, as some have done in Fig. 65, 
they stick fast. The lily, for all its innocent look, 
has laid a trap for them; it is covered with a 
sticky substance which holds them fast. The tiny 
pollen grain begins to send out a tube like a little 
hose- pipe, which grows down and down to the 
bottom of the lily. There it finds some very 
small egg-shaped bodies called ovules (Fig. 65, 6). 
The busy little hose-pipe pushes its way into a 
little opening at the end of one of the ovules, 
pumps away till the pollen grain is empty, and 
the liquid out of it is all safely stored in the 
ovule, and then it withers away. The ovule when 
it is ripe is a seed, but if the pollen has not 
emptied itself in the way just described, the 
ovule dies. 

One of the most curious plants we have, in 
some respects, is our common corn — Indian corn. 
When it is " in tassel," at the top of the stalk is a 



168 Chapters on Plant Life. 

great bunch of dull-colored flowers. If you look 
carefully at them you will find that each is a 
leafy case, and out of this, like the clapper of a 
bell, hang several pods. When the pods are ripe, 
out of an opening at the lower end pours a cloud 
of pollen, which fills the air around the corn- 
stalk. We have seen how carefully the pollen is 
guided to the pistil in orchids, the methods used 
to make sure the meeting and combining of the 
two cells, the pollen, or whip, and the ovule, be- 
ing very wonderful and various. In some plants, 
like the corn for instance, it is left a good deal to 
chance — the wind blows the pollen about — but 
to prevent failure millions of pollen grains are 
grown and dispersed, with the chance of one here 
and there reaching the pistil. In the corn the 
pistil is in a very queer place. I am sure you 
must have seen the cook pulling off the green 
leaves or husks from an ear of green corn, or 
perhaps you have done it yourself. Out of the 
little end of the husks hangs a bunch of fine 



" Picciola" 169 

silky threads. Each one of these threads is a 
pistil; it is a hollow tube, and terminates at its 
farther end in a little sac holding an ovule — it is 
like the bottles in the liverworts and mosses, only- 
it has a tiny little body and a long, long neck. 

It seems hardly possible, and yet it is true, that 
every single grain of corn that ever grew was 
made by a partnership between a pollen grain 
from the top of the corn-stalk, and this little, 
buried, wrapped-up ovule, down deep under the 
green leaves of the corn -husk. How do you 
think the pollen ever gets at the ovule ? It has 
not the power of whipping around and making 
its way down these tubes. A little pollen grain 
blowing about in the air, is blown against a 
thread of corn -silk; this, like other pistils, is 
sticky, and it stays there. Pretty soon the pollen 
grain pushes out a little nose, as the seed and 
spores do when they begin to sprout ; this little 
tube pushes its way down and down, right 
through the whole long length of the corn-silk. 



170 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



It never sets up a single partition wall in all this 
long distance. After a while the pollen tube 
finds the ovule down a long passage-way, and 
then the partnership is formed. 

Every strand of silk on a perfect ear of corn, 

when the grain begins 
to form, is a double 
tube — one tube the 
silk, with another, the 
pollen tube, running 
its whole length inside 
it. When the contents 
of the pollen grain is 
pumped through this 
long hose-pipe into the 
ovule, then, and not till 
then, the seed corn be- 
gins to grow. 

The very next time 

heir way in ; o, ovules. (2) Front y 0U can (J SO, examine 
iew of pistil not cut. J 

(Viola tricolor.) an ear of corn carefully. 




'K i 
Fig. 67.— Pistil of Hearts- 
ease. 

(1) Side view of pistil sliced in two. 
6, pollen grains which have found 
their 
view 



" Picciola" 171 

You will find each thread of silk leads to a single 
grain. If any place is found on the cob where 
a grain is wanting, it is because, for some reason 
or other, no pollen tube ever gained its way to 
the ovule, and so the ovule withered and died. 

If you look at Fig. 67, you will see the pistil 
of a pansy, or heart's-ease. No. 1 is a side view 
of the pistil sliced down so you can see into it, 
as you can into a baby-house. You see the pol- 
len grains, 5, sending down their tubes to the 
ovules, o. No. 2 in this drawing is the front 
view of the heart's-ease pistil. The beautiful 
colored leaves of a flower are only meant to 
cover and protect the pistil and the pollen of the 
plant, as the fruit is meant to cover its seed. 
There has been a tender care for us in all this 
that the covering for both should have been 
made so beautiful and so delicious. 



172 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 



Chapter XIV. 
CLIMBING PLANTS. 

Have you never wondered, when you looked 
at a tangle of grape-vine or morning-glory stems, 
how they came to twist themselves together so ? 
Perhaps you had some sort of a notion that they 
got tangled up as a bunch of silk or a skein of 
worsted lying loose might do. Examine any vine 
which you can find growing near you, and see how 
different the tangle is from a snarl of thread: 
there is a regular twist, the branches coiling in 
the same direction. In some plants the turn is 
from right to left, in others from left to right. 

There must, of course, be some reason for this, 
and we can best find it out by taking a young 
plant, a seedling, and watching what it does from 
the start. 



Climbing Plants. 173 

It would be very natural to think that plants 
moved only as stones do, because something pulled 
or pushed them; but this would not be a true 
conclusion. Every plant that we know much 
about is firmly fastened by its root in the ground ; 
the movements of its leaves and flowers seem 
only caused by the blowing of the wind or the 
beating of the rain. But though plants are an- 
chored fast to the earth, they are all the while 
moving as they grow. 

Take some seed — beans will do — and after 
soaking them, plant them in the ground about 
two inches deep. In a week or ten days you will 
see the earth cracked all about. This is not 
merely because the growing plant acts like a 
wedge and splits the earth open, but because in 
growing the first little leaves move round and 
round, boring their way out of the ground very 
much as a corkscrew works its way into a cork, 
and cracks the earth around it. The first leaves 
of most plants — a bean, for instance — do not come 



174 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



straight up out of the seed ; but when the seed 
coat bursts from the swelling of the inner part a 




Fig. 68.— The Bean. First Leaves in different Stages. 

little arch projects, which raises itself up. This 
arch is the stem, and after a while the leaves are 
pulled out of the sheath, and the arch widens out, 




Climbing Plants. 175 

and finally straightens up. You have often seen 
a man who had a heavy weight to lift bow him- 
self over and receive the weight, and then lift it 
by straightening himself, as the stem does to lift 
the leaves (Fig. 68, first leaves). The root bur- 
rows into the earth in very 
much the same way as the 
stem revolves, by going 
around and around as it 

grows (Fig. 69). Take a 

Fig. 69.— Movement of 
morning-glory vine, and let root of Black Bean. 

it lie without any wire or ^ position at nine o'clock ; 

J B, position half an hour later. 

trellis to catch hold of. After 
a while you will find the stems and tendrils 
coiled round each other in a tight twist (Fig. 70) ; 
you could not begin to twist them so tightly 
yourself without breaking the stem. 

The tips of all growing plants, like the first 
leaves that pierce the ground, move around ; they 
are forever weaving their magic circles in the air ; 
they take many hours sometimes to make a single 



176 Chapters on Plant Life. 

turn, but they are as regular as the hands of a 
clock, and never forget and go backward. I have 
been watching some wistaria branches lately, and 




Fig. 70.— Mobning-glokees. 

(Convolvulus.) 



have been very much interested to see the new 
shoots, as they grew rapidly in the soft warm 
air, taking a slow turn around the wire placed 



Climbing Plants. 



177 



to support them, very much as you might wrap 

your arm about a swing -rope to take a better 

hold. If there is a post or a wire near, you do 

not have to give your vines the twist they need 

to climb; they do their own twisting as they 

grow, and always in this quiet, deliberate way. 

You have no doubt noticed 

that a Virginia creeper does not 

need a wire to climb by; it 

grows beautifully up any wall 

which has little unevennesses. 

Now look, if you can get hold 

of a new shoot, what the creeper 

has to help it along. It sends 

out tendrils that branch into 

many ends, and each one of 

these ends swells and becomes 

a sort of sticky pad, which glues 

itself to the wall (Fig. 71). 

These little pads, when they find no wall to fasten 

themselves upon, remain small, and finally wither 

12 




Fig. 71.— YniGimA 
Creeper. 

(Ampelopsis.) 



178 



Chapters on Plant Life. 




away. Those on the spray in Fig. 71, which was 
trailing from a vine, are so, some small and some 
quite gone ; but look at the pads in Fig. 72, which 
were detached from a painted board, and see how 
they look through the microscope. 
Very much like a boy's India-rub- 
ber sucker, are not they ? Some 
of these have the paint from the 
board still sticking fast on them; 
others are all sparkling with the 
dried mucilage, which makes them 
look as if they had been sprinkled 
with sugar. 

These little many-armed suckers give the plant 
a firm hold, while its head waves around until it 
touches some surface again, and again the pads 
lay hold for another upward stretch. 

There must be some curious arrangement by 
which plants, that cannot feel and will as animals 
do, can move. They have no brains to think with, 
no nerves to feel with : it is strange to believe 



Fig. 72.— Pads 
through the 
Microscope. 

(Ampelopsis.) 



Climbing Plants. 179 

that they really do move with a reason. Mr. 
Darwin has examined the subject so closely that 
he has taken nearly six hundred good-sized pages 
to tell all he has found out about it. His ways 
of finding out are many. One method is this : he 
takes a small stiff bristle and glues it on the 
growing part of a shoot. By watching this shoot 
and comparing it with other shoots which had no 
bristle attached, he could not detect any difference 
in the movements. Above the little branch with 
the bristle attached he placed a piece of glass 
that had been smoked, so that the bristle, as it 
moved with the movement of the tip, would travel 
over the glass. He did not need to stand by and 
watch the branch ; he could go away and attend 
to anything he chose, and when he came back 
there on the glass was a history of the travels the 
shoot had made, written by itself. He managed 
to hang up a sprouting bean or pea, so that the 
root recorded its own movements in the same 
way. There were other ways which he used, all 



180 Chapters on Plant Life. 

of them being ingenious, and requiring the great- 
est attention to get a correct map of their move- 
ments. He found that every plant in growing 
moved around as well as upw r ard, but that some 
moved far more than others : the ones that grew 
tall and slender and needed support would send 
out shoots that swayed round in bigger and bigger 
circles until they could reach something to sustain 
themselves by, or else they would fall in helpless 
heaps on the ground. 

Mr. Darwin was not a man to be satisfied with 
finding that a thing is so. He never rested until 
he found just how it came about. I do not mean 
to say that he was the only man who studied 
these things, for there were many others who did ; 
but he wrote about what he had studied in such 
a clear and simple and interesting way that any- 
body could understand him, and so people who 
don't pretend to be very wise in such matters 
read Mr. Darwin's account and nobody's else ; 
and are apt to forget, though he is alw 7 ays careful 



Climbing Plants. 



181 



to mention their names and what the} 7 have done, 
that any one else deserves any of the credit. 

By closely studying the little cells of which the 
leaf or stem is made up, he found that when, for 
any reason, a plant needed to turn in a certain 
direction, the water in 



M 





the stem rushed from 
the inner to the outer 
part of the curve, mak- 
ing the cells on the 
inner side of the stem 
a little smaller, and 
those on the outer a 
little larger, than usu- 
al. After a while the 
stretching of the outer 
cells makes them grow and stay larger (see in the 
figure how it must be, Fig. 73), and so the curve 
remains. You cannot straighten a stem curved 
in this way without breaking it. 

Every movement of stems and leaves comes 



Fig. 73.— Diagram of Straight 

and Curved Stems. 
a, stretched cells ; 6, crowded cells. 



182 Chapters on Plant Life. 

from the movement of the water that fills their 
cells. But besides the water, there is something 
else just as important, and that is the sun. The 
water is only a servant, which obeys the light as 
its master. Many flowers turn their bright faces 
always to the light. They follow the sun as he 
moves through the heavens all the day long 
from his rising to his setting. This comes from 
the effect the sun has on the water in the stem, 
and not because the flower is beginning to " take 
notice," as the baby's bright eyes do of a lamp 
when it is moved about a room, though it does 
remind one of it. 

The movement of climbing plants is only one 
of many curious movements that are made by 
stems and roots and leaves and flowers, though 
the cause is the same in all cases. 



Vegetable Pitchers. 133 



Chapter XV. 

VEGETABLE PITCHERS. 

Neaely seventy years ago a gentleman living 
in North Carolina began to watch some very cu- 
rious plants which he found growing in a poor 
piece of land near his home. Hundreds of peo- 
ple had probably seen these plants, but Dr. 
McBride seems to have been the first who really 
studied them and wrote down what he found 
out about their ways. 

Out of the moist ground a tuft of leaves grew ; 
some of these were ordinary leaves, others were 
extraordinary. To examine the last you might 
almost think that the fairies had been up very 
early in the morning with their thimbles and 
needles and invisible silk, and had selected a leaf 
here and there in the tuft, and doubled it around, 



184 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



and sewed the edges to- 
gether, so as to make a long 
slender pitcher to catch the 
summer rain in. If the fair- 
ies were responsible for 
these pitchers, they must be 
very good seamstresses in- 
deed, for such a seam you 
never saw. You may look 
at it through the largest 
kind of a magnifying - glass, 
and not a stitch can be seen, 
not a knot nor a loose thread. 
The raw edge of the seam 
is always turned outward. 
Look at Fig. 74. Here is a 
single pitcher which grew 

Fig. 74.— Open-mouthed not far from New York City, 
Pitcher • 1 a 

, seam, with honey trail; ln a SWampy place. Any 

P , pitcher part; h, hood; fi ne <j a y [ n May you will be 

m, mouth. J J J 

{Sarracenia purpurea.) pretty SUl'e to find SOme of 




Vegetable Pitchers. 



185 



these pitchers for sale at 
the small stalls on Four- 
teenth Street, between Fifth 
and Sixth avenues, if you 
happen to be in New York, 
and are on the lookout for 
them (f is the seam and p 
the pitcher). Above the 
pitcher you see a curved 
and veined leaf, ^, which 
stands up and partly curves 
over the open mouth, m. It 
does not quite cover it, so 
some rain usually gets into 
the hollow tube. 

These curious trumpet- 
shaped leaves are not grown 
for the benefit of the fair- 
ies, nor even for the beetles 
and flies which often pack 
the lower part of the tube 




Fig. 75. — Pitcher with 

Overhanging Hood and 

Clear Windows. 

k, hood ; w, windows ; /, hon- 
ey trail ; c, cord around 
mouth; m, mouth. 

(Sarracenia variolaris.) 



186 Chapters on Plcmt Life. 

full, but are for the use of the plant on which 
they grow. I have never found insect remains 
in the pitcher you have first been looking at, 
but in Fig. 75 I have taken out hundreds, some- 
times packing the tube up for four inches or 
more. These trumpets are the stomachs of the 
plant; the flies and insects id the trumpets are 
the remains of many dinners — those parts of the 
insects which they could not digest. 

Plants usually, as we have found out, feed by 
means of their roots. The food they get is in the 
ground, and the roots push down into this, and 
suck up out of it what they need to keep them 
alive and make them grow. The pitcher-plants 
live in very poor soil, where they can find very 
little to nourish them. They get little besides 
water through their roots. They would die, just 
as you or I would, if they had nothing but water 
to live on, so they are provided with these stom- 
ach-pitchers. 

Before you eat your food some one has to get 



Vegetable Pitchers. 187 

it and cook it; then you have to chew it and 
swallow it. If these plants had one - half of all 
this to do to get fed, there would be none of 
them on the earth now; they would all have died 
out long ago. But these pitchers, besides being 
stomachs to digest the food, are traps to catch it. 
Along the edge of the raw seam (/, Figs. 74 and 
75) are rows of honey glands, so that from the 
ground to the edge of the pitcher's brim there is 
a trail with honey drops leading a careless insect 
on and on, and up over the edge, <?, into the hol- 
low of the trap. Once inside, there is no hope 
for him, for the inner part is covered with deli- 
cate hairs pointing downward towards the pit 
below. An ant, a fly, and many another insect 
can walk straight up a pane of glass, or on the 
smoothest ceiling, and yet it will go reeling and 
tumbling along on this hairy floor. The sticky 
pad it has on its feet, its claws, and even the pat- 
ent little sucker which aids some of them in hold- 
ing on, all go for nothing when it undertakes to 



188 Chapters on Plant Life. 

stroll on this bending, moving, uncertain wall 
inside the pitcher's brim. In a second the un- 
wary visitor slips and falls, no matter how hard 
he tries to save himself. Even with the advan- 
tage of wings an insect seldom escapes, but soon 
forms part of the liquid mass filling the lower 
part of the pitcher — a horrible mixture, part wa- 
ter, part a juice which oozes out of the trumpet- 
leaf, and part dead and decaying insects. 

There is something very horrible in the idea of 
a plant, a beautiful plant, too, luring insects to its 
trap, and then feeding on them like a dreadful old 
ogre. In one or two of the pitcher-plants at the 
upper end are clear spots which let in the light. 
Against these skylights the trapped flies strike 
and bump, as they do against a window-pane, till 
they fall into the pit below (w, Fig. 75). This 
pitcher-plant, as well as that shown in Fig. 76, is 
rich with beautiful colors, red and yellow and 
olive green, with clear pale yellow transparent 
windows, and above the cluster of these leaves 



Vegetable Pitchers. 



189 



grow the stems which 
bear their flowers. 

One of the most beau- 
tiful of these plants grows 
in the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains, in Northern 
California, so high that 
the flower may be found 
blooming higher up than 
the top of Mount Wash- 
ington or any mountain 
east of the Mississippi 
River. It is too high up 
in the world to have any 
every- day name, but is 
called, in part after its na- 
tive State, Darlingtonia 
califomica. This has no 
common leaves at all, but 
from the root spring two 
kinds of pitchers — little 




Fig. 76.— Pitcher-plant in 
Bloom. 

{Sarracenia rubra.) 



190 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



baby pitchers, something like those in Fig. 76, 
and others, large, beautifully col- 
ored and veined pitchers, with a 
curved -over roof and two long 
flaring wings (Fig. 77, Darlingto- 
nia calif ornica). 

Every one of these pitchers is 
twisted round about half a turn. 
The colors are like those of rich 
ripe fruit — brilliant reds and yel- 
lows and greens; not 
brighter than those of 
the other pitcher-plants, 
but richer and mellow- 
er. The flower of this, 
too, is very curious. It 
grows on a tall stem 
four or five feet high, 
and looks like a rich 

Fm. 77-DABLiNaTONiA Call Fed and ?* 11 ™ Stri P ed 
fornica. tulip hanging down, 




Vegetable Pitchers. 



191 




but with an extra row of 
petals above. The flower 
is arranged as a trap too. 
It, like the orchid traps, 
draws the insects flying 
about to itself, and by feed- 
ing them with honey in- 
duces them to carry the pol- Fig. 78.— Bladder- wort. 
len of the flower to the (»*■**■.) 

sticky place where the pollen dust must rest to 
make the flower bear seed. Then — it is hard to 
think of this beautiful plant without feeling that 

it is a traitor — it lures 
the insects to its pitch- 
ers and devours them. 
There are many other 
plants which devour 
insects as the vegetable 
pitchers do. Among 
them are some very 

Fig. 79.— Bladder with Capt- . 

URED Prey. curious little things 




192 Chapters on Plant Life. 

that grow sometimes in water, sometimes in the 
air, and occasionally in the earth. The English 
people call them bladder-worts, because on the 
stems or roots or leaves little tiny cups grow, 
which were formerly supposed to be useful as 
bladders to float the plants. Closer study of 
them has shown these to be traps too. One 
of the most curious of these traps may be seen in 
Fig. 78. 

The plant you see here is one which has no 
leaves, only branching stems. This is one of the 
kind that live in water. It goes floating around, 
looking like the most innocent of plants, until 
some unwary animal comes near the mouth of 
one of the bladders (Fig. 79). In a minute the 
mouth or trap- door opens, the victim is gulped 
down, and slowly dissolved and absorbed. In- 
side the stomach you will see a quantity of little 
irregular stars with four rays. These are the 
organs that take up the nourishment which the 
unfortunate prey supplies. 



Some Queer Traps. 193 



Chapter XVI. 

SOME QUEER TRAPS. 

I want to take you with me some bright sum- 
mer day on a little visit to the boggy lands of 
southern New Jersey. Close beside a cranberry 
patch let us stop and look at this great bed of 
wild flowers. The ground is covered as thick as 
they can stand with spikes of delicate rosy flow- 
ers and long narrow green leaves, sparkling in 
the sunshine as though they were set with mill- 
ions of bright jewels. These cannot be rain-drops, 
for it has not rained for a week, nor dew-drops, 
for the sun is high, and the dew would have been 
dried up long ago. Look close, and you will see 
that each narrow leaf is covered with tiny stalks, 
each tipped with a bright drop of what looks like 
dew. Touch it, and you will find the drop to be 

13 



194 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



sticky. The sun, which dries common dew or 
rain drops, draws out this sticky substance. From 

this fact the plant is 
commonly called sun- 
dew (Fig. 80). 

The sun-dew in the 
picture is not the one 
we have just found grow- 
ing, but belongs to the 
same family. The prin- 
cipal difference between 
them is that it has round 
green leaves instead of 
long narrow ones; but 
what is true of one is 
equally true of the other, 
so far as its general be- 
havior is concerned. 

It had long been 
known that the sticky 

Fig. 80. — Sun-dew Plant. 

(Drosera.) drops on the sun -dew 




Some Queer Traps. 195 

leaves served as a trap to catch insects, but it was 
not fully known why the insects were so caught 
and how they were disposed of until Mr. Darwin 
began to watch them and study their ways. If 
anybody in the world could get the truth out of 
a plant or animal, Mr. Darwin was the man. He 
tried a thousand ingenious ways of cross -ques- 
tioning them by tests and experiments. There 
are few more interesting stories than that told us 
about the ways of the flesh-eating plants. The 
sun-dew is one of these ; the insects it captures 
are for food. 

Look at this leaf, which was picked from a sun- 
dew plant and looked at through a magnifying- 
glass (Fig. 81). It is somewhat the shape of a 
palm-leaf fan, fringed around the edge, and covered 
over the upper surface with strange prolongations. 
These are called tentacles, because they are some- 
thing like the arms of some sorts of sea animals, 
with which they capture their prey. The leaf is 
not perfectly flat, but, as you can see by looking 



196 



Chapters on Plant Life. 



at Fig. 80, it sags a little in the middle, making 
it slightly cup-shaped. 




Fig. 81.— Sun-dew Leaf Magnified, showing Tentacles. 
(Drosera leaf.) 

For some reason insects seem to be very fond 
of flying around the sun-dew plants, and sooner 



Some Queer Traps. 197 

or later they are pretty sure to brush their gauzy 
wings against a leaf or light upon one. Then 
there is no hope for them; they stick fast, just as 
unfortunate flies stick to the fly-paper spread open 
to catch them. 

Watch that happy little fly sipping honey from 
one flower after another. Now see him settle down 
right on the middle of one of the sparkling, harm- 
less-looking leaves. He is caught. No struggles 
will loosen the poor little feet glued fast by the 
sticky drop on the tentacle. His struggles to free 
himself are only making his capture more certain. 
The touch of his feet, light as it is, is like the 
touch of a telegraph operator's finger upon his 
instrument. The fly sends not one message by 
his touch, but hundreds — one to every tentacle 
on the leaf, telling it to come to the central office 
and get its share of the booty captured. In re- 
sponse every tentacle begins to curve over to the 
middle of the leaf, until at last the miserable fly 
is caught in a hundred arms. 



198 Chapters on Plant Life. 

The message goes slowly, and the movement 
of the tentacles is slower still — so slow that it 
takes from one to five hours for the movement to 
cease after the insect is caught. When the fly- 
alights on the side of the leaf, or anywhere away 
from the middle, the tentacle it touches bends 
over, carrying its prey with it, to the centre of 
the leaf, and then the arms all begin to move 
towards the middle and clasp it. Sometimes, 
when the insect is not on a long tentacle, and so 
cannot be carried to the middle, only the arms on 
that side clasp it. 

But the most curious part is not the catching 
of the fly. Many other kinds of sticky leaves 
and buds catch flies ; the sun-dew devours them. 
The leaf acts precisely as your stomach does after 
you have been eating; it pours over the insect a 
liquid acid which dissolves what is good for food. 
This dissolved food causes the flow of another 
liquid, called the gastric juice. In your stomach 
the gastric juice has the power of turning the food 



Some Queer Traps. 199 

you have swallowed into blood, which makes 
flesh and bones ; it, in fact, builds up your body 
day by day, and makes you live and grow. The 
gastric juice of the sun-dew builds up its body in 
the same way, only instead of blood and flesh it 
makes sap and cells. 

If you want to keep well, you must eat the 
right sort of food, and so must the sun-dew. One 
poor little plant that Mr. Darwin was experiment- 
ing upon turned yellow and sick, and finally died 
of dyspepsia, after having been fed for a long 
time on nothing but cheese. 

One full meal lasts a sun-dew leaf a good while, 
usually nearly a week. After a fly, or a bit of 
meat, or anything proper in the way of food, has 
been seized and digested, the tentacles slowly 
open out. That means that it is hungry again, 
and ready for another meal. 

Of course when the plants grow wild they have 
to depend, like other savages, upon the prey they 
capture, and often they must go hungry. In try- 



200 Chapters on Plant Life. 

ing to find out all about these curious plants they 
have been fed with all sorts of things — meat and 
milk, and different kinds of soup. When a few 
drops of milk are poured on a leaf it will very 
often curve up around the edges, making the cup 
deeper, and the tentacles at the same time bend 
over to get their share. The leaf makes in this 
way sometimes a round and sometimes a three- 
cornered cup. One very strange thing has been 
found out : if a small piece of meat is cut in two, 
half of it placed on a sun-dew leaf, and the other 
on some damp moss close by, the meat on the 
moss spoils, and is filled with living things, like 
any spoiled meat, but the piece on the leaf stays 
fresh until it is digested. 

Another plant which lives upon the prey it 
captures is the Venus's fly-trap (Fig. 82). It 
grows in great quantities on the poor lands of 
North Carolina. It has few and small roots like 
the sun-dew. The leaves grow out from the cen- 
tre of the plant. From the same place the flower 



Some Queer Traps. 201 

stems and roots also grow, just as is the case in 
the sun-dew. Only three leaves are given in the 
picture. The plant usually has from eight to 




Fig. 82. — Leaves of Venus's Fly-trap. 

A, A, A, three leaves of Dioneae ; B, half the trap, showing sensitive hairs ; 

a, opening and empty ; &, open ; c, closing over fly. 

(Dionece. ) 

twelve ; the flowers are quite large, of a delicate 
greenish- white. The whole leaf is not a trap, but 
on the tip of each leaf you see them : b is open ; 



202 Chapters on Plant Life. 

c is closing over a fly which it is about to make a 
meal of. 

The traps, you see, are a little like the two 
valves of a clam-shell, hinged together at the back, 
and edged all around with sharp spikes. On the 
inner side of each shell are three long hairs ; these 
hairs (B, Fig. 82) are very sensitive, and the in- 
stant they are touched the valves close, the spikes 
locking together as your fingers do when you 
clasp your hands. If the thing caught in the trap 
is not fit for food, the valves open before long; 
but if it is the right sort of food, the spikes stay 
closely clasped until the food is digested, and 
then they open and drop out any remains which 
were of no use to them, such as the horny coat 
of a beetle, and are ready for another feast. 

One day when I was looking through a fine 
collection of plants in a greenhouse on Madison 
Square, New York, I caught sight of a very sin- 
gular bunch of leaves (Fig. 83). I said to the 
gardener: "What is that? It is very curious." 



Some Queer Traps. 



203 



"Yes," he said, taking the 
pot up in his hands; "they 
are queer little fellows, the 
thirstiest little rascals I ever 
saw ; can't get enough water 
anyhow," and he dipped the 
whole pot into a cask of wa- 
ter, filling up the pitchers 
on the ends of the leaves to 
the brim. The 
picture (Fig. 83) 
is taken from a 
sketch made on 
the spot. It 
comes from Aus- 
tralia, and is still, 
I believe, very 
rare; this is the 
only one I ever 
saw. Its habits 
and manners do 




Fig. 83. — Australian Pitcher-plant. 

(Cephalotus.) 



204 Chapters on Plant Life. 

not seem to have been as carefully studied as some 
of the other flesh-eating plants, but it is a near 
cousin of the last and most curious of these traps. 

These last of the "queer traps " grow chiefly in 
the islands of Polynesia. In shape they are some- 
thing like the vegetable pitchers we saw in the 
last chapter, but their way of really digesting 
food shows that they are nearer kin to the sun- 
dew than to the pitcher-plants. 

The plants are large, with many leaves, the 
stem, after running through the middle vein of 
the leaf instead of stopping at the tip, runs right 
through it, and grows one or more feet beyond 
the tip of the leaf. On the far end of this stem 
is a graceful pitcher, with two fringed flaps down 
the front, and a leaf hinged on for a lid which 
is sometimes open and sometimes shut (Fig. 84). 
The pitcher is usually partly filled with a sticky 
liquid. Some of these pitchers are half a yard high, 
and would hold quarts and quarts of water. The 
plant bears great spikes of beautiful flowers, and 



Some Queer Traps. 



205 



the pitchers themselves are gorgeous in color — 
green and red and pink, with curious markings. 
The rim around the mouth is beautifully orna- 
mented, and inside the 
mouth is a sort of fun- 
nel of projecting points, 
leading down to the 
trap below. You have 
probably seen the same 
sort of arrangement in 
a rat-trap; it is very 
common. Small birds 
attracted by the smell 
or color of the flower, 
or the hope of a drink 
from the reservoir be- 
low, make their way 
down. It is a trap easy 
to enter, but hard to 
escape from in the face 

r ^|\ Fig. 84.— Bird Trap. 

Of the points. In its (Nepenthes.) 




206 Chapters on Plant Life. 

struggle for freedom the poor little fluttering 
thing gets its wings wet and sticky, and is either 
drowned at once, or lingers on and is finally di- 
gested by its beautiful captor. This is turning 
the tables truly, when vegetables catch and de- 
vour birds, instead of being destroyed and eaten 
by them. 

These are perhaps the most wonderful family 
of plants that we know anything of. They seem 
to be leading us away from the vegetable world 
and to be introducing us to animal manners and 
customs, and so seem to bring to a natural close 
our studies in plant life. 



THE END. 



Mfflstim Books for Yon People. 



THOMAS W. KNOX'S WORKS. 8vo, Cloth. Profusely Illustrated. 

THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE FAR EAST. Five Parts, $3 00 each. The 
Five Parts in a Box, $15 00. 

Part I. JAPAN AND CHINA. 

Part II. SIAM AND JAVA. With Descriptions of Cochin China, Cambodia, 
Sumatra, and the Malay Archipelago. 

Part III. CEYLON AND INDIA. With Descriptions of Borneo, the Philip- 
pine Islands, and Burmah. 

Part IV. EGYPT AND THE HOLY LAND. 

Part V. JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA. 

THE VOYAGE OF THE " VIVIAN " to the North Pole and Beyond. Adventures 
of Two Youths in the Open Polar Sea. $2 50. 

HUNTING ADVENTURES ON LAND AND SEA. Two Parts. $2 50 each. 
Part I. THE YOUNG NIMRODS IN NORTH AMERICA. 
Part II. THE YOUNG NIMRODS AROUND THE WORLD. 

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN'S WORKS. Four Volumes. Copiously 
Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00 each. 

THE STORY OF LIBERTY. THE BOYS OF '76. 

OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES. BUILDING THE NATION. 

COUNTRY COUSINS. Short Studies in the Natural History of the 
United States. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 

INDIAN HISTORY FOR YOUNG FOLKS. By Francis S. Drake. Co- 
piously Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 

THE CATSKILL FAIRIES. By Virginia W. Johnson. Illustrated by 
Alfred Fredericks. Square 8vo, Illuminated Cloth, $3 00. 

WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW in his Voyage round the World in the Ship 

" Beagle." Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 



Interesting Books for Young People. 



HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE. Bound Volumes II., III., and IY. Vol. 
V. just ready. (Yolume I. out of print.) 4to, Cloth, $3 50 ea^h. 
Each Yolume contains the 52 Numbers for a year, with over 800 pages, 
and about 'TOO Illustrations. 

HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE SERIES. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00 
per volume. 

TOBY TYLER ; OR, TEN WEEKS WITH A CIRCUS. By James Otis. 
MR. STUBBS'S BROTHER. Sequel to "Toby Tyler." By James Otis. 
TIM AND TIP. By James Otis. 
RAISING THE "PEARL." By James Otis. 
LEFT BEHIND; OR, TEN DAYS A NEWSBOY. By James Otis. 
THE MORAL PIRATES. By W. L. Alden. 
THE CRUISE OF THE "GHOST." By W. L. Alden. 
THE CRUISE OF THE CANOE CLUB. By W. L. Alden. 
THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY BROWN. By W. L. Alden. 
MILDRED'S BARGAIN, AND OTHER STORIES. By Lucy C. Lillie. 
NAN. By Lucy C. Lillie. 
THE FOUR MACNICOLS. By William Black. 
WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON? By John Habberton. 
THE TALKING LEAVES. An Indian Story. By W. O. Stoddard. 
THE ICE QUEEN. By Ernest Ingersoll. 

THE LOST CITY ; OR, THE BOY EXPLORERS IN CENTRAL ASIA. By 
David Ker. 
PRINCE LAZYBONES, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mrs. W. J. Hays. 
CHAPTERS ON PLANT LIFE. By Mrs. S. B. Herrick. 

DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT; OR, PLANTATION CHILD-LIFE. By 

Louise Clarke-Pyrnelle. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

NEW GAMES FOR PARLOR AND LAWN. By G. B. Bartlett. 16mo, 

Cloth, $1 00. 

POLITICS FOR YOUNG AMERICANS. By Charles Nordhofp. 12mo, 
Half Leather, 75 cents ; Paper, 40 cents. 

GOD AND THE FUTURE LIFE. The Reasonableness of Christianity. 
By Charles Nordhoff. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 



Interesting Books for Young People. 



THE BALL OF THE VEGETABLES, and Other Stories in Prose and 
Verse. By Margaret Eytinge. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. 

THE HISTORY OF A MOUNTAIN. By Elisee Reclus. Hlustrated 
by L. Bennett. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG NATURALIST. By Lucien Biart. 
With 117 Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75. 

AN INVOLUNTARY VOYAGE. By Lucien Biart. Illustrated. 12mo, 
Cloth, $1 25. 

THE BOYHOOD OF MARTIN LUTHER. By Henry Mayhew. Illus- 
trated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

THE STORY OF THE PEASANT-BOY PHILOSOPHER. (Founded on 
the Early Life of Ferguson, the Shepherd-Boy Astronomer.) By Henry 
Mayhew. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By Henry Mayhew. Illustrated. 
16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE ; or, Young Humphry Davy. The Life 
of a Wonderful Boy. By Henry Mayhew. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

THE BOYHOOD OF GREAT MEN. By John G. Edgar. Illustrated. 
16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

THE FOOTPRINTS OF FAMOUS MEN. By John G. Edgar. Illus- 
trated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

HISTORY FOR BOYS; or, Annals of the Nations of Modern Europe. 
By John G. Edgar. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

SEA-KINGS AND NAVAL HEROES. A Book for Boys. By John G. 

Edgar. Illustrated. 16rao, Cloth, $1 00. 

THE WARS OF THE ROSES. By John G. Edgar. Illustrated. 16mo, 

Cloth, $1 00. 



Interesting Boohs for Young People. 



HOW TO GET STRONG, AND HOW TO STAY SO. By William 
Blaikie. With Illustrations. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00 ; Paper, 50 cents. 

SOUND BODIES FOR OUR BOYS AND GIRLS. By William Blaikie. 
Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 40 cents. 

DOGS AND THEIR DOINGS. By Rev. F. 0. Morris, B. A. Illustrated. 
Square 8vo, Cloth, Gilt Sides, $1 75. 

TALES FROM THE ODYSSEY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. By C. M. B. 

32mo, Paper, 25 cents ; Cloth, 40 cents. 

CAST UP BY THE SEA; or, The Adventures of Ned Grey. By Sir 
Samuel W. Baker. Ill'd. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25 ; 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

THE ADVENTURES OF REUBEN DAVIDGER; Seventeen Years and 
Four Months Captive among the Dyaks of Borneo. By J. Greenwood. 
8vo, Cloth, $1 25; 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

WILD SPORTS OF THE WORLD. A Book of Natural History and 
Adventure. By James Greenwood. Ill'd. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 

HOMES WITHOUT HANDS : Being a Description of the Habitations of 
Animals. By the Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S. With about 140 Illus- 
trations. 8vo, Cloth, $4 50 ; Sheep, $5 00 ; Half Calf, $6 75. 

THE ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY. By the Rev. J. G. Wood, 
M.A., F.L.S. With 450 Engravings. 12mo, Cloth, $1 05. 

CAMP LIFE IN THE WOODS ; and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap 
Making. By W. Hamilton Gibson, Author of "Pastoral Days." Illus- 
trated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

DAVIS'S NIMROD OF THE SEA. Nimrod of the Sea ; or, The Ameri- 
can Whaleman. By William M. Davis. With many Illustrations. 
12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

REID'S ODD PEOPLE. Odd People: being a Popular Description of 
Singular Races of Man. By Captain Mayne Reid. With Illustrations. 
16mo, Cloth, 75 cents. 



Interesting Books for Young People. 5 

FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. Glimpses of American Natural His- 
tory. By Ernest Ixgersoll. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

PAUL B. DU CHAILLU'S WORKS ON AFRICA. Five Volumes. H- 
lustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 each. 

THE COUNTRY OF THE DWARFS. MY APIXGI KINGDOM. 

WILD LIFE UNDER THE EQUATOR. LOST IN THE JUNGLE. 

STORIES OF THE GORILLA COUNTRY. 

ROUND THE WORLD ; including a Residence in Victoria, and a Jour- 
ney by Rail across North America. By a "Boy. Edited by Samuel 
Smiles. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE SELF-HELP SERIES. By S. Smiles. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00 each. 
SELF-HELP. CHARACTER. THRIFT. DUTY. 

STORIES OF INVENTORS AND DISCOVERERS in Science and the 
Useful Arts. By John Timbs. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

OUR CHILDREN'S SONGS. Hlustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $1 00. 

FAMOUS LONDON MERCHANTS. A Book for Boys. By H. R. Fox 

Bourne. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

PRAIRIE AND FOREST. A Description of the Game of North Amer- 
ica, with Personal Adventures in their Pursuit. By Parker Gillmore. 
Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

PUSS-CAT MEV, and Other New Fairy Stories for my Children. By 
E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen. Hlustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

FAIRY TALES OF ALL NATIONS. By Edouard Laboulate. Trans- 
lated by Mart L. Booth. Hlustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Bevelled Edges, 
$2 00 ; Gilt Edges, $2 50. 

LAST FAIRY TALES. By Edouard Laboulaye. Translated by Mary 
L. Booth. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Bevelled Edges, $2 00; Gilt 
Edges, $2 50, 



Interesting Books for Young People. 



THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS ; or, The Arabian Nights* Enter- 
tainments. Translated and Arranged for Family Reading by E. W. 
Lane. 600 Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 50. 

JACOB ABBOTT'S WORKS. 

SCIENCE FOR THE YOUNG. Illustrated. 4 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 each. 
HEAT. WATER AND LAND. 

LIGHT. FORCE. 

FRANCONIA STORIES. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents each. 

MALLEVILLE. WALLACE. MARY ERSKINE. 

MARY BELL. BEECHNUT. RODOLPHUS. 

ELLEN LINN. STUYVESANT. CAROLINE. 

AGNES. 

LITTLE LEARNER SERIES. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents each. 
LEARNING TO TALK. LEARNING ABOUT COMMON THINGS. 

LEARNING TO THINK. LEARNING ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG. 
LEARNING TO READ. 

MARCO PAUL SERIES. Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels in the Pursuit of 
Knowledge. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents each. 

IN NEW YORK. IN VERMONT. 

ON THE ERIE CANAL. IN BOSTON. 

IN THE FORESTS OF MAINE. AT THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY. 

RAINBOW AND LUCKY SERIES. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents each. 
HANDIE. THE THREE PINES. 

RAINBOW'S JOURNEY. SELLING LUCKY. 

UP THE RIVER. 

YOUNG CHRISTIAN SERIES. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75 each. 
THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN. THE WAY TO DO GOOD. 

THE CORNER STONE. HOARYHEAD AND M'DONNER. 

THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN. A Memorial Volume. With a Sketch of the Author 
by one of his Sons. Steel-Plate Portrait of the Author, and Wood-cuts. 12mo, 
Cloth, $2 00. 



Interesting Books for Young People. 



ABBOTTS' (JACOB AND J. S. C.) BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORIES. Il- 
lustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00 per volume. 

CYRUS THE GREAT. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 

DARIUS THE GREAT. QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

XERXES. CHARLES I. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. CHARLES II. 

ROMULUS. HERNANDO CORTEZ. 

HANNIBAL. HENRY IV. 

PYRRHUS. LOUIS XIV. 

JULIUS CESAR. MARIA ANTOINETTE. 

CLEOPATRA. MADAME ROLAND. 

NERO. JOSEPHINE. 

ALFRED THE GREAT. JOSEPH BONAPARTE. 

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. HORTENSE. 

RICHARD I. LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

RICHARD II. GENGHIS KHAN. 

RICHARD III. KING PHILIP. 

MARGARET OF ANJOU. PETER THE GREAT. 

THE HISTORY OF SANDFORD AND MERTON. By Thomas Day. 
18mo, Half Bound, 75 cents. 

JOHN BONNER'S CHILD'S HISTORIES. 

CHILD'S HISTORY OF GREECE. Illustrated. 2 vols., 16mo, Cloth, $2 50. 

CHILD'S HISTORY OF ROME. Illustrated. 2 vols., 16mo, Cloth, $2 50. 

CHILD'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. New Edition, Revised, and 
brought down to the Close of the Rebellion. Illustrated. 3 vols., 16mo, Cloth, 
$3 75. 

THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES NAYY, for Boys. By Benson 
J. Lossing. Illustrated. 12mo, Half Leather, $1 ^5. 

FRENCH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH CHILDREN. By Sarah Brook. 
With Illustrations and Colored Maps. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated. 
2 vols, in one, 16mo, Half Leather, 60 cents. 



8 Interesting Books for Young People. 

THE HISTORY OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD, and its Effect on the 
Organization of Men and Animals. By Jean Mace. Translated by 
Mrs. Alfred Gattt. 12mo, Cloth, $1 15. 

THE SERVANTS OF THE STOMACH. By Jean Mace. Reprinted from 
the London Edition, Revised and Corrected. 12mo, Cloth, $1 15. 

HOME FAIRY TALES. By Jean Mace. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 
$1 15. 

YOUTH'S HEALTH-BOOK. 32mo, Paper, 25 cents ; Cloth, 40 cents. 

STORIES OF THE OLD DOMINION. From the Settlement to the End 
of the Revolution. By John Esten Cooke. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 
$1 50. 

FRED MARKHAM IN RUSSIA; or, The Boy Travellers in the Land of 
the Czar. By W. H. G. Kingston. Illustrated. Small 4to, Cloth, 15 
cents. 

SELF-MADE MEN. By Charles C. B. Seymour. Many Portraits. 12mo, 

Cloth, $1 15. 

ROBINSON CRUSOE, of York, Mariner ; with a Biography of Defoe. 
Illustrated. Complete Edition. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00. 

THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. Illustrated. 2 vols., 18mo, Cloth, 
$1 50. 

THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON— Continued : being a Sequel to the 
Foregoing. 2 vols., 18mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With a Life of the 
Author, by Robert Southey. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; Gilt 
Edges, $1 50. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

jfcg" Harper & Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage pre- 
paid , to any part of the United States or Canada^ on receipt of the price. 






sim 












